painting gear doors on navy aircraft

Sometimes for very fine lines or detail I use the point of a toothpick as brush. I shake paint bottle, remove cap, place it upside down on bench, and poke end of toothpick into top. It picks up a very small amount of paint that can be transferred to part. You daub in a series of connected dots. The pick holds so little paint that you cannot flow it along like a brush. But this gives you super control. It is a little tedious- you need a lot of overlapping dots if the line is very long, but it does work.

Get yourself a red "Sharpie" brand marker. They come on several tip sizes and when new, have quite useable points. Paint the doors white (or whatever color is prescribed) and let dry. Apply the Sharpie to the edges of the doors where needed. Done! I just used this technique last night on a 1/48th Italeri F-14B and it worked quite well. If need be, you can mask with tape to get a crisp line but mostly, there'll be an indentation or lip to follow when applying the marker. Another nice thing about this is that the ink feeds both ends of the marker (if you choose the two-ended type (I reccommend those)) so if you need a finer or wider application, the colors match.

Frank Kranick

I use a fine brush, but it's helped to see that on the real aircraft, there is often an area of white overspray that encroaches on the red. This is true mostly of operational aircraft, often those on the boat, but it certainly does help if you have to explain an error!

Don H.

A red Sharpie or a layer of enamel on a piece of glass and press the edges into it.

Spray them gloss white, and then cut thin strips of red decal sheet to make the red trim. Seal with glosscote, or leave as-is. Works GREAT.