Just a question, most model magazines show models being assembled before they are painted. In the case of armour wheels & tracks are shown installed prior to painting. How do you paint the inner & outer surface of the wheels, suspension, lower hull if all these parts are installed? Is this done just for the photo shoot for the magazine article? I try to paint as much as I can prior to building & touchup later on as required.
It depends. If they are steel-wheeled I glue them to the lower hull. If they have rubbered tires, I paint the wheel on the sprue. I guess it is old fashioned, but hey so am I. Okay I’m not that old. Basically I will build as much of the base color as possible and then paint. Tools, tracks and rubbered-rimmed wheels i paint seperate.
I never paint running gear after assembly, especially if the road wheels have rubber tires. I always do it on the sprues, or as sub-assemblies.
I paint the road-wheels seperately and glue on later.
Now while assembling parts ‘prior’ to painting I may glue the road-wheels on the hull using white glue (elmer’s) to that they’ll stay on and then just pull off when it’s time to paint them!
Glenn
p.s.- the reason I may put the road-wheels on the hull before painting is to use them as a guide while making the individual-link tracks. After the tracks are made I remove the road-wheels and continue building process, which at some point includes painting everything.
For me, it’s the indies and wheels on the sprue, tools after cleaning up, the hull after assembly. I’ve tried the roadwheels post assembly, but unless it’s only a single (not interlevered), it’s too much of a hassle to get everything.
I put the whole thing together and paint it all afterwards.
If you do any amount of weathering at all on the lower hull, you’ll lose all lines of demarcation between steel and rubber, wheel and track, anyway, so surgical precision when painting those areas is not necessary.
I used to spend hours meticulously painting rubber tires, only to see it all turn into one dusty Earth color after it was all said and done, so 've since decided to stop doing that.
What I do do, however, is pre-shade the entire suspension, tracks, and lower hull area with flat black, so that any area paint doesn’t quite reach is safely depicted as shadows, and not shiny “hey, how’s it going?” plastic.
If you’re doing a shiny show-room Sherman, however, you might want to meticulously paint all the rubber and tracks seperately, becuase you will indeed see the lines of demarcation if the vehicle is “clean.”
I use to paint the road wheels before assembly,then I read a article about it was easyer to paint them after you have assembled the kit.So when I got me an airbrush this is what I started to do.I reallized that the rubber wheel are not perfect when they are painted in the field nor are then masked for perfect painting when coming out of the warehouse.This I knew when I worked out at Red River Army Depot.If this is the case and it was,out in the field they would not worry about clean lines either.These clean lines get erased just like J-Hulk said.Most of the rubber on the wheels as lone as the tools and everything else gets painted the same color unless they just got out of the factory.So I would assemble first the paint and when you go to paint the road wheels and they don’t come out crisp,don’t worry;they don’t in real life either.Digger