Re: Aircrafts Wheels painting

Modeling Subjects Aircraft
1

Greetings all

I was wondering if anyone in here can privide me with some tips on painting airplane wheels. I bought this mig 21 model, and was successful at making a whole lotta mess on the wheels.

Regards

2

Everyone will have their own favourite method. Mine is to spray (if possible,) the hub, which is, usually, lighter than the tyre, then mount the wheel on a cocktail stick. If there’s no axle hole, drill one. Either drill another hole, in a block of wood, or get a largish lump of plasticene, blu-tac, or similar. Push the cocktail stick into this, and slowly rotate the wheel, with a finger and thumb, while holding a loaded paintbrush against the (usually raised) wheel rim. Once you’ve gone round the rims, it’s a fairly simple task to fill in the rest of the tyre. With the right size of block, it’s possible to support your paintbrush arm on the workbench, while rotating the wheel.

Edgar

3

Edgar has the right idea…
I use the same method - spray the rim, then hand paint the tire, but for the first coat, I use a 0000 brush with very thin dark grey paint (dark grey because only brand new tires on cars in showrooms have BLACK tires - go on - go have a look at the car in your driveway…it’s got very dark grey tires, doesn’t it?)… I only just touch the loaded brush to the deepest part of the crevice between the tire and the rim, allowing capillary action to “pull” the thinned paint around the circumference of the hub.
This makes it much easier to ease thicker paint around the tire - as you now no longer have to get REEAAAAALLLLY close to the hub - and risk making a mess of your beautifully painted rims.
It’s easy, and nearly foolproof.

4

Or you can go the opposite way and paint the tire first. Then you match the wheel to the right size hole in a circle template, and using the template as a mask, spray the wheel.

5

I spray the wheel white.

I flow some very thin Nato Black paint around where the ‘rubber’ meets the wheel.

Then use Nato Black to paint the ‘rubber’.

Works every time!

6

That is basically what I do, too. Of course your color choices will depend on what aircraft you’re building, but it almost guarentees spot-on demarcation between the tire and the rim.