Painting 1:700 clear plastic airplanes.

General Discussion General Modeling Discussion
1

I am building a model on aircraft carrier and bought the Trumpeter 1:700 scale F18’s. My question is what is the best way to clean the parts and then paint them without losing my mind?

Thanks,

Earl

2

Soap and water to clean, prime first with white or grey, then paint. clear plastic for some reason seems difficult to paint, probably because it is transparent but patience ond many light coats usually do the trick.

3

I am going to work with the idea that you have an airbrush, so if you don’t, then just change this to meet your methods.

after you wash the parts, and rinse with Cold water, let the parts dry.

Mask off the canopy on each plane, then paint the plane overall in the interior color. After that dries, paint the plane in the bottom gray, let dry, then paint the plane in the top gray. If you have any trim colors, mask and spray those.

then remove the masking on the canopy, and you have the interior color showing through the clear, just as if you had painted the interior separately

if you try to do a “patchwork” of the interior color, that patchwork is what will show through the clear canopy bump, so don’t shortcut that part

Rex

4

Rex,

Thank you most kindly for this info. I have a lot of the F18’s to paint for the USS George Washington, CVN 73 which I am now going to tackle starting with the Trumpeter USS Theodore Roosevelt CVN 71.

As this a 1:700 kit, I do not think that it will be easy for me to build this in a timely manner. My grandson is serving on the George Washington and I want to have it done when he come’s home in early part of 2015. What is good for masking off such small canopy’s?

Thanks Rex,

Earl

5

Earl, you might want to check out Checkmateking02’s posts of his tiny Hellcats from last year’s US Carrier Aviatoin Group Build.

It starts here, you’ll have to follow along from there.

cs.finescale.com/…/154052.aspx

CMK02’s posts start a little past halfway down this page. I don’t recall it taking him too long to finish them, so maybe not to many pages to forward through.

CMK02 did an outstanding job on his Hellcats, hope this might help.

6

I just masked the canopies for the observation planes on a 1:350 cruiser. I used Tamiya tape and it worked fine. In fact, I found more problems gluing the planes than painting them. The stuff felt more like acrylic than styrene, and may have had some sort of mold release.

7

Greg,

Thanks for the link. I found it to be interesting and informative.

Earl

8

I was wondering about the type of material used. Also, why in the world do they make them in clear material?

Thanks Don,

Earl

9

Glad to hear. You’re welcome, Earl.

10

They make them in clear so that you can paint them in two or three layers as I posted.

The other options are colored plastic, which means you have to choose a paint for the canopy area that you think looks like a clear canopy when finished, or cutting off the canopy and making clear replacements. Clear plastic is actually the easiest way to provide the simplest option.

By the way, I have tried Silver paint, Metallic Blue paint, and the Gold metal decals,unless you hit on just the perfect color that no one else has tried, you probably won’t like the “paint that area shiny” method when you go back and look at your model two weeks after you finish it.

If you ever do a 1/350, you can then use separate clear canopies and get interior photo-etch sets from White Ensign Models and Gold Metal Models. Then you only have to paint the aircraft like a 1/48th kit,including reaching down into the cockpit with your brush.

Rex

11

Thanks Rex,

I really not looking forward to painting these small planes. But, I know that it needs to be done. Or I could leave them clear and say that they are the latest in stealth technology.

Earl

12

Earl,

welcome to the world of 1:700 aircraft!

Really, they aren’t that bad.

In addition to the build Greg mentioned (thanks, Greg, by the way) I recently did four SBD Dauntlesses for USS Enterprise. You can find them here, at Clemens’s “Pacific Carrier Aviation GB”: cs.finescale.com/…/157781.aspx

I’ll have to do more for the flight deck.

I haven’t done any modern jets (although I have USS Nimitz waiting in the closet), but masking canopies shouldn’t be too much different.

Good luck with them; and keep a good optometrist handy.

13

Checkmateking02,

Thanks for the tip about the optometrist, I may just need one. I was not aware of Starfighter Decals, I am going to check them out.

Earl

14

oh man, 1/700 is really really small. There really only is one way to tackle this problem, and that is make the aircraft bigger, then shrink them back down. First to get those little suckers bigger , you are going to need a bucket full of propyl alcohol. Then stir in corn starch and 2/3 liters of superPlex. then put your airplanes in and let sit over night. in the morning they will have grown to 1/48 scale. now paint them and finish them. Now you have to shrink. This is the tough part. take your planes and lay flat on parchment paper. Take a spay bottle and spray tropical tan tanning lotion all over model. Now lay out in sun if the humidity is less than 45%. After 72 hours the planes will have shrunk back down to 1/700. there ya go.

15

You’re drunk, right?

16

I got started in the days of wood model kits. A few of the topnotch kits did have transparent canopies, but most did not. The question of what to paint them was a big thing. Some modelers used black, some used light blue, some used silver. With any color, what the background was determined how well it looked. In a model show you often didn’t know what color the ceilings would be. If it were a windshield, like a bomber or airliner or multi-passenger light plane, gloss black was a good bet, but for canopies really nothing looked that good. So to me the use of transparent material for aircraft to be carried on a ship is great. I have bought aftermarket planes just because of that, when older carrier kits featured opague plastic planes.

17

Welcome, Earl.

One technique I’ve found with Starfighter Decals is not to use MicroSet on the model surface before you apply the decals. They seem to stick almost immediately, and are then difficult to position.

I’ve had better luck applying them with plain water. You can then manipulate and slide them into position very easily. After waiting maybe half an hour till the decal is dry in place, then I’ve dabbed on a little MicroSet; waited about half an hour and applied MicroSol. It might not be necessary to do, but then after a couple more hours, I put on a second dab of MicroSol, and everything snuggles down very well.

Anyway, that’s my experience with them, and I’ve been using them for a couple of years, now.

Starfighter Decals are excellent products, and Mark, the owner, has a wide variety of subjects. I’ve used his 1/72 decals on some Coral Sea and Midway Navy aircraft. They are just as good as the 1/700 stuff.

Again, good luck! And show us some photos of your results!

18

Falcon,

I like your style! This is one suggestion that I have not received before. Do you think that the pro modelers are keeping secrets such as this one from us? My wife thinks that I am losing my mind as I just ordered the decals for these planes.

Earl

19

I think we all need a little bit of levity and not take ourselves so seriously. After all, modeling is supposed to be fun.

Earl

20

I have several 1:350 ships waiting to go into the shipyard for building. I just finished building the 1:400 Titanic and it is waiting for the acrylic case I am building for it. Then it’s off to my armor for awhile.

Thanks Tex,

Earl