Having a bit of problem with this.
Due to the way the tips of bombs narrow towards the point, masking it off for paining stripes is a bit difficult. (Tape wont mold in straight lines)
Painting Yellow by hand is a definate no-no (almost as bad as painting white).
Any ideas on easy techniques other than wrestling some more with the tape?
using a compass or a circle template, you can cut a mask out of tape that would conform to the bomb nose.
I use the rubber bands used on braces or small “O” rings from a brake rebuild kit — my son is a mechanic. The “O” rings work the best for me.
I just splurged and bought a 1/48 Hasegawa F/A-18F and was trying to figure out what all these multi colored small stripes were on the decal sheet. Turns out they are the color bands for the rockets. Try using strips of decal for your bands on rockets or bombs. For the concave front of bombs the small rubber bands for “braces” work well. Paint the yellow first then put the rubber band to mask it and paint it OD.
Or you can use a circle template as a mask, and fit the right hole over the bomb to the depth that you want.
I think the way to go is with the rubber bands for me.
(Fresh our of brake rebuild kits)
I thought about decal striping, but like masking tape…they wont mold flat on a tapered surface.
I could be wrong here - but on the real thing aren’t those stripes just painted by hand ? Shouldn’t they look a little rough ?
I do it by hand using the following method…
Hold the bomb vertically with its point on a hard surface (I have a piece of glass). put some paint on a fine point brush. Choose a plastic or a wood shim to hold the brush at a certain distance from the glass surface, and just spin the bomb against the brush. Sure - you’ll get a slight variation in the width of the line, but with practice this can be reduced to a minimum - and I figure it should vary a little bit.
Works for me. good luck,
Chris
Do you mean like this?
I painted the entire front yellow and then used a piece of heat-shrink tubing and just slipped it over the end to work as a mask and then sprayed my bomb color again.
Yes they were. I have also seen some painted with spray cans. The stripe or tip that was painted yellow never had a uniform size. I have seen bombs loaded on aircraft with different shades of yellow tips. On most seen now, the whole tip is painted yellow. Most don’t even have a stripe.
In an issue of Fine Scale Modeler**,** I think it was in a December issue ('02 ,'03 ?), there was an article about a guy making tons of bomb bands for his B-52. He made it from an old battery powered screwdriver he strapped down to a board. He secured a piece of dowel rod to the end. He cut an “X” on the exposed end enabling the fins to slide in. Turning it on, the low speed of the screwdriver was enough to hold a paintbrush up to the bomb making a nice uniform stripe. I thought it was such a good idea, I built one similar.
WWII bombs had all sorts of strips from none to on the nose to just forward of the tail fin to the entire tail being yellow. I’ve also see film of orange bombs with big white bands around the middle —maybe training bombs?
Also, don’t sell the “O” rings short. Stop by an auto parts store and ask if they have any spares. They come in a variety of sizes and make a much cleaner line than rubber bands – IMHO.
I believe the red/orange bombs you speak of were incindiaries, I believe. I too have seen film of them being dropped on Germany
Orthodontic rubberbands work really well. Sorry Dr. Trimmel!!!
-graham
From being with a unit deployed to a couple of combat zones, the paint stripes ARE NOT perfectly square because of the haste of getting them from the ammo dump to the plane the B-B stackers really don’t have the time to make perfect masks for the stripes, so in the real world just get it close will be the best and accurate will be on the money
I used a fine tip paint pen. And as everyone said, the stripes are not perfect but they are not that crude either so depending on what scale you are doing will depend on how perfect you need to get them. The stripes are applied at the factory, not in the field. They are sprayed on and at time the edges are not masked so you have a soft edge.
Also, as a tip, if you are doing a carrier plane from 1970 to present there will be two yellow stripes on the bombs, not just one. The second yellow stripe is to denote thermal coating that was required on all bombs after the Forrestal Fire.
The orange bombs with white stripes, if they are from 1970’s to present then they are practice Destructors/Quickstirke air laid mines. They are painted orange so they can be easily found and recovered after they have been dropped. If they are WW II they could either be incendiery (sp?) or just painted that way so the crew could follow their bombs all the way down. WW II practice bombs were usually paint overall yellow or a very light blue.
When we used to get the bomb convoys in I noticed as I searched the vehicles that certain bombs had 1-2 stripes depending on what they were. Since we had mostly B-52s the 750s a lot of times carried two stripes. Would the stripes indicate what type of explosive they were loaded with? Some had tritinol and others had minol, and we even got some large cluster and some B.S. bombs too.
Prewar and early WWII live bombs were painted yellow as I have seen color film of them being dropped as in the case of the documentary “Report from the Aleutians”. The yellow color showed up real well from a background of snow.
As Stated by Reddog earlier. 2 yellow stripes on the nose would indicated a thermal coating on the bomb. This also would be the rough surface that someone inquired about earler in the thread.
This can be simulated by dusting the body with Talcum Powder before the primer dries.Then just paint over the powder.
As for painting the stripes. One other thing you can do is. Place the bombs fin end into the chuck of a dremel or small drill. Spin it at slow speed and just touch the end of the brush, paint pen or marker to the place you want the stripe.
One other thing to consider, The fin assembilies. They rarely if ever matched the color of the bombs. While the bombs arrived painted O.D., the fins would be varying shades of green such as FS# 34102, 34079, or shades in between. Another detail commonly left out was that on some fin assembilies there was a hole in the back and the rear of the TERs and MERs had a whole which would indicate that they were hollow.