With the popularity of recessed panel line kits in aircraft and other subjects the old raised surface line kits seem out dated. My question is for those who have an inventory of the older kits. What is your approach to building these kits? Do you sand and scrawl the old kit details, or build them as they are? Or are you totally turned off by the older kits and prefer the neo-tech variety. Slyfox
I usually rescribe the detail, but sometimes just build them as they are.
Regards, Rick
I say leave the raised panal lines, I personaly almost never build any of the newer kits and have found the raised lines to be just fine, but if there is rivit detail and lots of it like on the 60s Revell and Monogram kits that has to go. Dont even bother with a resribe becaue it was never that way on the real thing. Most panals overlap and thus the raised lines are more accurate.
The skies the limit,
V.A.
Yup! I’ll build them as they are. If I’ll need one with recessed panel lines, I’ll just buy the new releases
Hmmmm…I think it depends on the kit like has been mentioned. I have a kit with raised panel lines with AM replacement panels that are recessed so the kits going to get rescribed.
Depends on the plane… if its supposed to have raised panels like a B-17 then I leave them
I build them as is… but that’s just because I’ve never tackled a rescribe before, and I don’t think I’m ready for that yet anyway. Maybe someday.
Scribing is a skill I have yet to master. If I have a kit with recessed panel lines, and sand some away during construction, I’ll try rescribing them. As for rescribing an entire model just because it came with raised lines?? Forget about it! [:)] I’d rather spend my time detail painting or scratchbuilding something for it.
I have rescribed one kit, an old airfix p-38 with huge rivets and panellines. It’s not a job that I would like to do every time I build a kit!
If the raised detail is OK (that is not ugly/oversized etc) then I just leave it. I use preshading and drybrushing techiqiues to highlight the panellines.
I just leave it as is. Some people get so bent out of shape when they see raised detail but there’s nothing wrong with it in the least. I don’t care either way. I do like the way you can accentuate sunken panel lines using light washes but the truth of the matter is that I look at the sunken panel line on something as diefied as a Tamiya product and think “Man! If this was enlarged to scale then that panel line would be about an inch wide trench on the real plane!” People talk about accuracy and slam raised panel lines but I think sunken panel lines are no better.
So, having said that, I really don’t care if it’s raised or sunken. To me one is just the same as the other.
Eric
Depends on the kit and if I have forgotten to mask off areas before sanding [banghead] away like a madman.
Cheers
Thom
I have a few Revell kits of Korean War Era aircraft 1 F-80 1 F-86 2 F-84F all have raised panel lines and have thought about using the pane lines as a painting guide after masking individual panels
I have never tried to rescribe an entire model. It is just more work than I am willing to put into it. It would require a number of hours of hard work to remove the old raised lines and sand everything super smooth again. Then the rescribing itself is time consuming also, especially if you slip with the scribing tool and make a wayward scratch someplace.
I like to use a graphite drafting pencil to acentuate panel lines anyway. The raised lines work much better for this and produce a noticeable line with over doing it.
Darwin, O.F. [alien]
I build it as it is. Although I do prefer recessed lines for newly-tooled kits, just because they don’t sand away as easily and are easy to replace.
Like the commit that AH1Wsnake I have not yet mastered re-scribing and only do it when I have sanded away the detail. I just leave it like it is unless you are trying to cover up a mistake and it has to be done![#ditto]
YES! Everyone shoud read the reply by >echolmberg< above. This has become a real problem in modeling. If you look at a model plane in 1/48 scale from a foot or two, the recessed panel lines look neat. Crisp and clean. If that was a real plane and was still that size in your view it would be 50 yards or so away, and you would not see any panel lines. Perhaps some discoloration where oily hands touched different panels, but no huge wide gaps. Planes with inch-wide gaps in them don’t fly (unless they’re WW II Russian attack planes-which had even wider gaps and flew just fine). We have learned this in regards to “scale shine”, even a highly polished century series fighter (F-106?) if seen from 50 yards away doesn’t show a high gloss. At most a subtle “semi-gloss” is apropriate. Everyone knows this, why don’t we see this regarding the gaps you could jam a finger into.
For this reason, I think the older Monogram kits build up very realistically. You just sand down all of those offending lines, rescribe only the widest ones, and use the trick listed above of using a drafting pencil to very finely draw in the lines. Followed by some slight darkening around the edges of the most used panels- like listed above by >yardbird78< and >RemcoGrob<, both excellent replies.
And anyway, who cares if you “went the extra mile” or not. Do you enjoy building models? Then build them. It’s just a hobby, not a life style. I’ve got a few hundred kits in my basement. And I want to build every one of them. If I take the time to rescribe all the raised panel lines it’s going to take me even longer to build them. As it is, I finish maybe 3 or 4 a year to the level that I want. Let’s see, I’m 48 years old. I’ve got 200 kits to build before I die. Each one takes me 3 or 4 months to build the way I want to. I don’t think that math works out.
I hope that you’re not contemplating rescribing panel lines because all the guys at the “contest” said that you had to do this to join the ranks of the “elite”. I don’t show models at contest any more because I was building to win awards, not to enjoy the act of sitting down with a pleasant subject and building a nice kit over a few hours. A pleasant hobby. Not obsessing about the absolutely correct markings for Adolf Galland on June 26th, 1944 on the afternoon flight (because everyone knows he had that changed when he returned from his morning flight due to a bullet hole repair—you knew that didn’t you?)
Just enjoy the art of model building.
chip