When you’ve just spent a bunch of hours doing that perfect airplane cockpit, how do you protect all of your detail work while you finish the rest of the airplane? With the filling, sanding, scribing and washing, how do you avoid wrecking the cockpit?
If you stuff it with tissue, won’t you break delicate parts like the control stick/wheel? Can you use masking tape to cover the opening? Any thoughts appreciated.
Best way I go about this is to mask and glue the canopy and windshield in place with Testors Clear Parts Cement or elmers white glue. You can very easily remove them by cutting the glue with a #11 X-acto blade through the openings between canopy and fusalage then gently pry them off without damaging the model.
I use the above method as well, but open cockpits like those seen on WWI aircraft present an entirely different challenge. Sometimes they call for masking exposed engine parts as well. For those, I use facial tissue dampened with water so it conformes nicely to irregular shapes. For the open cockpits, I cut light foam padding slightly oversize and gently stuff it into the opening, taking care not to damage any of the interior. It’s a bit tricky, but it works.
i found some makeup sponges at the dollar store that I have used and so far so good. One use only, but thier wedgeshap makes it easy to stackas many as you will need to get the seal, and it does not leave fuzzy residue like a tissue will.
Actually I have had tissue soak thru before while painting.