Hey guys, I’m getting ready to paint the second upper camouflage color for my Gloster Meteor and I just want to make sure I’ve got my facts straight. Was the color demarcation between the two top colors soft or hard edged? What I mean is, is there some overspray or was it neatly masked? Thanks!
I was told in a prior post that the British use cut rubber mask on there camouflage so it would be a shape edge. This is what I go by
British camouflage was hard-edged, since any over, or under, spray would be likely to induce drag. The permitted overspray was 1" between adjacent colours, and 2" between upper, and lower, colours. Boulton Paul bevelled the edges, of their mats, to achieve this. The mats were made of a rubber mixture; from what I’ve been told, it sounds like the rubberised hair often used for packing. The mats were used in repair depots, but it was common for a/c (especially large ones) to be painted freehand, provided the sprayer adhered to the above limits. Several people have asked why no examples exist, but rubber has a fairly short life (5-10 years is common) which is why neoprene became so popular. There’s a German wartime liferaft (neoprene) in Tangmere’s museum, where they make the point that there’s no British (rubber) wartime equivalent surviving.
Edgar
Following on from what Edgar said, if you’re confident in achieving soft-edged camo not exceeding 1/24" / 1mm (and that would be for uppersurface/ undersurface demarcation in 1/48 - everything else would be less ) then fine. If not, go for hard edges.
Cheers,
Chris.
I usually hard edge British camo. In 1/48th you can’t make the very fine edge that the full size aircraft had.
Max, you can use handi tack to make a nice sprayed hard edge.
Thanks for the info, guys. Looks like the soft edge was pretty firm!
Marc, how big was the diameter of the handi tac used? Pretty small? This is provided that we use the same technique (make handi tac snakes).
About 1/8" I would say. Someone was asking about this same thing over in Tools. Check the blu tack thread. I posted a couple of pics. One of the tricks is to keep the spray perpendicular to the surface as best you can. Spraying at an angle into the snake will give a very fine edge, almost like tape but then you may as well use tape. Spraying at an angle from behind the snake will give a slightly wider feathered edge.
I remember Roy Sutherland of Cooper Details had this information on his previous site. He had a conversation with WWII employees of a British aircraft manufacturer. They did use a mat for the basic pattern then freehand the edges with a spraygun. So it might be more of a soft edge.
Mike T.
Have a look at photos of the real thing (as opposed to other people’s models). I think you’ll see that hard edges are the default option.
Cheers,
Chris.
Unfortunately, Roy had a theory, and tried to make it stronger with rather daft comments like “Sprayers are proud men,” so that they’d have done it their way. Not in Britain, in the 1940s (and 50s) they wouldn’t;they’d have been out on their ear, if they didn’t do as they were told. Another author, in the IPMS (USA,) said it wouldn’t have happened because rubber was a strategic material; well, paper was a strategic material, too, and had to be recycled, regularly, with weekly collections, so using paper, for masking, certainly wasn’t allowed. If you can get to see a wartime newspaper, it’s a delicate shade of brown, now.
The wartime workers, that I’ve spoken to, to a man said that they just sprayed over the mats, and that was it. In fact, two former Hawker employees recounted how they’d spray the entire airframe brown, then green, over the mats, and, for the “mirror” scheme, just flip the mats over. Instructional drawings, issued to the factories, gave the position of the edges of the camouflage, to a 1/4", hardly likely if they were then to be allowed to freehand over it.
A friend went to work at Hawkers, post-war, and found them using mats to spray the Hunters. When he queried it, they said that it was done in exactly the same way with the Hurricanes, etc., only they didn’t have time to employ someone to polish out any overspray. When he looked down the line, he saw a man, well past retirement age, using car polish on the overspray; he reckoned to take a day on one wing.
Edgar
Thanks Edgar and Chriss, I’ll keep that in mind. It probably was hard lines as you have pointed out.
Mike T.
I greatly appreciate the research that you and Edgar have put into this topic, and for taking the time to explain it time and time again. I have taken your advice and pulled up some photos of spitfires from the war. It seems to me that these photos (like most I have seen) indicate that there was a very slight gradient between the colors, probably on the scale of 1-2 inches like you indicate. I think that wing_nut’s method with the tacky tape does an excellent job of reproducing this effect on the small scale. Although the gradient would only measure 0.020 inches wide at 1/48 scale, that is still quite visible to the naked eye. IMO, wing-nut’s results with the tacky-tape (see his link) look much much better than a crisp hard edge.
These photos demonstrate slight fuzziness at the color borders. Is this relfective of the actual paint? Or is it perhaps a limit of the sharpness afforded by 1940’s vintage photography methods?
To my eye, both those aircraft seem to exhibit pretty hard-edged camo (but not as hard, admittedly, as the edges to the national inisgnia, which we know for certain to have hard edges) , but then my eyes aren’t as young as they used to be! [X-)]
In the end, this has to be a matter for the individual modeller. I know that my modelling skills aren’t sufficient to produce a consistent 1/48" or 1/72" soft edge between colours, so I’d do them as hard edges, even if there was incontrovertable evidence that the edges were actually faded over 1" on the real thing. On a model aircraft, few things look worse, in my opinion, than sloppily-applied soft-edged camo.
I can’t help wondering, however, if there isn’t an element of people seeing what they want to see. soft-edge camo is fashionable in modelling circles, and has been for some time. There is a perception among some modellers that contest judges look more favourably on soft-edged camo than hard-edged camo. IPMS judges are strictly enjoined not to award marks for scale accuracy, but instead for technical and artistic merit. Therefore, even if the real thing did have hard-edged camo, greater competition success may be achieved by giving a model soft-edged camo anyway.
Maybe if I do a Spitfire or Hurricane in 1/24 some day, I’ll think about soft-edged camo. I’d be fairly confident about being able to do a consisitent 1/24" or 1/12" feathered edge. Until then, I know my limits!
Cheers,
Chris.
An easy way to figure this question out is to look at things you KNOW are hard edge, like the outline of the tail. How fuzzy does that look in relation to the rest of the picture. In both pictures I would not consider the edge of the tail to be very sharp, hence the demarcation lines would also have that same amount of fuzziness.
Questions like this always intrigue me as no matter how you paint it, someone will tell you it’s wrong. And if your pursuit is “historical accuracy” all we as modelers can do is make something “historically representative”. Unless you can accurately paint the EXACT same demarcation lines EXACTLY where they were on the actual airplane what you have done is a representation. With all that being said, I say paint it how you want. At the end of the day it won’t be 100% accurate and the only person who really have to make happy with it is you.
There seems to be a slight misconception, here. We’ve had an enquiry into how something was done, and I’ve answered it, to the best of my knowledge, after several years of research. I haven’t seen, nor have I advocated, any “You must do it this way.” I wonder if you have any idea how galling it is to read someone’s guesswork, dressed up as research, done 3000+ miles away, essentially rewriting my country’s history? If someone has the courtesy to ask if it’s known how things were done, I feel bound (by the same courtesy) to respond, if I know the answer. If they then choose to ignore it, that’s their choice, and long may it be so.
Regarding this “fuzziness,” remember that the mats were laid over, in many cases, vertical, curved, surfaces. They would not have laid flush in every spot, so there would have been areas where the spray went under the edge; if it was within the 1" or 2", nothing would have been done. There are photos of Lancaster fuselages, which were built in three pre-painted sections, then assembled. During repair there’s every possibility that the fuselage would not have been disassembled, so any spraying would have been freehand. One of our former IPMS(UK) presidents told me how he was told to spray a complete Stirling, to the 1" limits, and the foremen made him do it four times, until he was satisfied.
Edgar
Wow - that is incredible! I would have guessed that in the middle of a world war, it would be more important to conserve paint than it would be to get everything within 1". Plus, this aircraft was probably delayed by several days getting off the production line just to get the paint right! That’s hard for me to comprehend, not that I am doubting you in any way. He must have stripped off hundreds of pounds in paint. (weight, not currency, LOL)
I’ll admit, that was my initial reaction, when he told me, but, on reflection, I suspect that he just sprayed the outline, first, and it was inspected before he was allowed to continue with the filling-in process.
Edgar
You are probably right. [;)]
That makes sense
The answer to the original question is that boundaries between the camouflage colours were not ‘hard’ like you would get if you used masking tape. I have no argument with Edgar, everything he says is as it was. However, not only was a certain amount of overspray permitted, it was also a requirement.
The Ministry of Aircraft Production had a set of drawings for various aircraft types, single-engined, twin-engined etc. that showed how the camouflage pattern should look. These were generic; they did not show a particular model of aircraft but could show a strong resemblance to one. E.g., the single-engined drawing looked like a Hawker Hurricane. These drawings were issued to aircraft manufacturers who then had to prepare a detailed layout for how they proposed to implement the camouflage on a particular aircraft. These drawings then had to be approved by MAP. No doubt MAP kept copies of them and may have issued them to other manufacturers when they were contracted to produce the same aircraft.
If you examine these drawings you will invariably find somewhere on them a note or remark that the boundaries of the colours are to be merged.
Here is Fairey’s drawing for their Battle.
To the right of the tailplane is the following note.
Boulton Paul’s drawing for the Defiant has similar remarks.
“The outlines surrounding the Green, Earth, and Sky on this Diagram are not to appear on the aircraft but the edges of the adjacent colours are to be merged. The whole undersurface of the aircraft as defined by Diagram and Notes to be finished Sky.”