I thought I might ask this in Aircraft rather than Painting or Techniques as I’d get more answers here.
Anyway, I’m getting ready to paint my 1/48 Italeri (Accurate Miniatures) TBM-1 Avenger, and I’m wondering, do folks paint the fabric control surfaces a lighter or darker variation of the base coat to sort of set those off a little bit? What’s the general rule of thumb on these?
Thanks!
Chris
If the control surfaces were fabric and not metal, I believe they would be a bit lighter than the base coat, If its metal then paint it the same.
Looking at photos, it seems the effect was more evident on OD AAF planes than on Navy planes.
The fading is very evident on the contemporary photos here: www.kootation.com/boeing-b-17.html
Note that some of the planes on this page are modern and others are artwork, but the actual photos from “the day” show the fading clearly.
Here’s a link to an Avenger that seems to have some weathering of the paint, but the control surfaces don’t seem much different than the rest of the craft.
http://navypedia.org/page/9122
Or did the Avenger have metal control surfaces?
I was wondering the same thing. I’m building the tamiya 1/32 corsair and was planning on painting the fabric wing surfaces a slightly lighter color. Not sure if this is correct or not but thats the plan.
Interesting topic, and I’ve formed my own opinion/ conclusion, for what it’s worth.
First, the Avenger has aluminum framed, fabric covered control surfaces. Flaps are not control surfaces.
Second, fabric on aircraft is coated with dope, not paint. This creates two conditions. First, the dope sand the adjacent paint are never exactly the same color to start with. Second, they deteriorate in different ways.
Paint fades. Dope doesn’t so much fade as it falls apart. But it’s easy to renew, and squadrons had Dopeys that did just that.
Colors with red fade the most quickly. OD has a lot of red in it. The print version cmyk ordinates are some thing like 63/26/100/8 (cyan,magenta, yellow, black in that order)
Navy blue has none.
Comparing control surfaces to the airframe on natural metal aircraft of course is not useful.
Last, control surfaces by their nature are never really parallel to the airframe, in photos. So shade and shadow play a big part in comparing.
All that being said, I also don’t see any photos that convince me that fabric control surfaces ever were lighter than the painted aluminum airframe because of fading. I’ve seen quite a few where they look much darker. But not on Navy aircraft.
I suggest that you paint your Avenger as though they are the same color.
GM
Chris, I’m about ready to paint my Fabric Surfaces on my AT-6. SInce it’s bare metal, the Fabric was sprayed with an Aluminum Aircraft Dope. It is actually a touch darker than the bare Aluminum on the Aircraft. If you look at the SBD-5 that I did I had it in the Navy Tri Color Scheme. There was not much difference on the White underneath. The Intermediate Blue on the Rudder and Elevator should definitely be lightened with some White paint to fade them out. However be careful to mask off and keep the metal trim tabs the same color as the other surrounding metal parts. I also took the time to fade out the upper surfaces of the Ailerons by lightening the Original FS 35042 Dark Sea Blue. The same thing was done to the metal trim tabs… keeping them the same color as the surrounding metal surfaces. It gets to be a bit trickier when you are fading OD and other colors. Good Luck with your project. I’ll be watching your progress. I have the Acc Min TBM 1C and TBM 3 in my stash. Later… Bob
Awesome. Thanks for all the help, guys.
Chris
I’d say no hard rule, just study some ref pics and go from there.
It has been my observation that it is extremely hard to tell fabric from painted metal by color. In fact, it is even hard by texture. Fabric surfaces are doped with several coats of clear dope, a coat of silver (actually aluminum) dope, and then the color paints. This fills the weave pretty well. On civil planes the weave is often quite well filled and painted, as appearance is important in selling civil aircraft.
To me the most important clues to fabric surfaces are the rib stitching and reinforcement tapes (pinking tape) and the apparent structure beneath due to these features. Now, on a natural metal finish it is something else. Painted silver or aluminum appears much different than real metal surface, so the fabric surfaces (ailerons, elevators, rudders) should be painted, not Alclad or foiled).
Fabric covered specials with really decorative paint jobs can look nicer and shinier than the normal factory finish put on metal skinned aircraft. Doped fabric very seldom looks dull. Now, all of the above refers to golden age or later. WW1 fabric aircraft were minimally finished. Those indeed looked pretty crummy.
From Don: “Now, all of the above refers to golden age or later. WW1 fabric aircraft were minimally finished. Those indeed looked pretty crummy.”
Good topic by the way. It is interesting how much effort is put in to getting it “just so” as a modeler, when in reality, hand painting seems to have been the rule of the day. Even on modern warship finishes, the paint is not applied all at once, resulting in slight color variations due to batch control, ambient air application humidity, painter’s skills from shift to shift, etc. I’m sure different replacement parts, paint, and conditions would influence the color outcome of a TBM in carrier service to the point where surfaces subject to battle damage and subsequent replacement/repair might result in one aileron being one shade and the opposite side being another for instance. Personally, I’ll go for just finishing the dang thing in a factory fresh appearance. I’m not confident enough to weather to any degree yet.
Why do they call it “dope”, I wonder?
Perhaps from the Dutch word “doop”, which means sauce.
Interesting info. Someone always seems to comment on why I lighten my control surfaces. For one, I think it adds interest and dimension to the model, after all, my goal is to replicate the real thing, not build something that looks like it was bought at Toys R Us. Also, for what its worth, we took a family trip to Dayton Air Force Museum recently and from what I saw, several subjects had noticeably lighter control surfaces, especially on the Olive Drab subjects as some have mentioned. I understand these are museum pieces which may not be “authentic”, but it can’t be coincidence that so many were lighter. I suppose in the end its a matter of taste.
Joe
Don, before the new synthetic fabrics and modern paints I think it was pretty common to have color variations on metal and fabric areas, because you had to use different finishes on the two areas. The boot cowl and engine cowl on a Cub was rarely the exact same color as the fabric because one was enamel and the other was a dope formulation, and the same would be true of WW II camouflage paints, and the paints would fade at different rates too. Nowadays we just spray urethane on all of it.
Do an old fashioned silk-span and dope covering on a stick build balsa plane, being sure to keep all windows and doors tightly closed. Then after an hour or so, you’ll know why it’s called dope!
While the doped control surfaces matched the painted metal surrounding areas when new, at least on OD/Neutral Gray aircraft, period WWII photos show that the dope control surfaces faded faster than the painted metal areas
and I just had to throw this one in for good measure
I have been trying to determine the color of an unpainted controll surface that I am want to represent on a P-51B. Any ideas of what that would be?
As an aircraft fabric teck I can tell you that dope is no where near as shiny as even older enamel paints, It does have a slight sheen to it though. For “sliver” fabric we use (just like in the past) clear buterate dope with alluminium paste mixed into it to keep the sun UV off the fabric. On ww2 planes it would most likely have been cotton.
There are about 16-18 coats of dope on a controll surface, right through to the final few colered coats. They are basically just clear dope with a pigment mixed in.
Dope does fade at a different rate to matal painted areas, aswell as way more ontop than on the lower areas.
For an interesting variation you may consider to do one of the surfases in a “newer” shade to look like a repair or replacement part.
Theuns
That is not the case. “doop” means, to dip or baptism. Sauce is called “saus” or in some cases “dip”.
As for fabric surfaces, I think there is/was often very little difference. To get just a small diffence in sheen I put one less coat of gloss or polish some of the panels. This way you get a very subtle effect.
Good point about cowls. For many other metal surfaces on otherwise fabric planes, the whole area often was painted with an aluminum paint. Even if the metal were primed first and then the aluminum applied, since aluminum paint is very opaque, that seems to have evened out the color. However, the planes I saw being recovered or repainted did have the engine cowls painted completely seperately. The cowls were not painted with the aluminum mix.
BTW, an article I read some time ago claimed that the Wright Bros talked about coating parts of one of their planes with dope (and described the stuff), so the term dates from at least that time.