I’m switching gears from my usual jet aircraft modeling and trying for WWI for a change of pace. I’m starting on an Eduard Albatros DIII. I have seen in the past some articles on achieving a wood finish on a plastic models but now I have having difficulty finding them. How do some of you get these realistic finishes? And is there any instructional links?
You might want to start by going to the the Knights of the sky WW I group build we have going on right now. There will be someone there that can help. I start with Model Master wood, then streak it with a darker thinned color, then maybe overcoat with Tamiya Clear Orange. I’m still woking on the technique.
Superjedi put this up in Techniques.
http://sci-fire.com/how_to_wood_grain.htm
This is from IPMS Stockholm.
http://www.ipmsstockholm.org/magazine/2003/03/stuff_eng_tech_wood_grain.htm
many cigars come with a very thin piece of cedar wrapped around them. Something like eight to ten thousandths thick.
gary
You can try the method I used on this Albatross… first you spray a coat of desert yellow (or similar shade) and then use a pencil crayon to draw the grain - I know, very labor intensive. Before hand you can also mask off a few panels and spray them a lighter or darker shade. Also you can use various brown shades of pencil.
Or you can try wood grain decals. Spada makes them and are available in the USA through MisterkitUSA
Jack
The wooden cigar tube inserts are one great way to source wood for builds like this as there is no replacement as good as wood for wood. Another source is wood shavings from a block plane. Visit a cabinet shop and ask for a few, especially the more exotic woods that have tight grains, which better replicate smaller scale effect.
when the local store is out of Henry Clays I often grab a handfull of the Punch cigars that have the cedar wrap on them. Also many boxes of cigars come with a very thin wood divider in them, but it’s usually about 1/64th of an inch thick. You can also buy scrap pieces of wood vineer in various types. But on the cheap and something super thin it’s hard to beat cigar wrappers.
gary
For props such as these:
I first spray the prop with a dark yellow such as Tamiya Dunkelgelb. Then I mask off thin length-wise strips with Tamiya Tape, and spray a medium brown. When this has dried I emove the masking, and brush-paint one or more thinned coats of Tamiya clear orange, until I have achieved the desired effect. Thinned Tamiya clear orange over the wood colour of your choice also works for struts, and most wooden parts on small-scale model ships.
For varnished wood fuselages, I use wood grain decal in either 1/72 or 1/48, applied over a gloss medium brown base coat, and with one or more coats of Future afterwards, depending on how shiny it needs to be.
Cheers,
Chris.
I had a chance to tour the Gulfstream facility here at Appleton. The cabinetry inside the aircraft was once made from exotic woods (back in the KC Aviation days) but now everything is fabricated using honeycombed aluminum sheets with natural wood laminates. The super thin sheets are very expensive and kept under tight control, nothing is wasted. I might have to go dumpster diving to see if I can find a few slivers for modeling…lol
Wow! Great suggestions and examples, all very much appreciated. Thanks to all…gives me a bit of encouragement to start my next build! I love trying new things!
My technique is to pre-shade the panel lines as well as preshading the wood grained areas with flat black. Then spray testors wood or some similar color as normal until you just cover the pre-shading in the dried state. The go back with some very coarse grit wetsanding and sand with the grain. This will start to uncover the areas of grain that were preshaded. When you start to bring out the grain you can switch to finer grit sand paper to smooth out the finish. It worked well on my D-II (I’ll try to post some pics in a bit)