Re: AFV Road Wheels

practice and patience make my painting improve. i do the toothpick and carefully rotate the wheels slowly and try to cover in one continous go around.

The above works. Plus

Paint a thin black separation line on the rubber next to the wheel hub first. This can be thinned black paint so that capillary action will cause the thinned paint to flow to give you a sharp separation from the hub without too much effort and with minimal over painting.

Then paint the wheel hub. Touch up the black separation line.

Since the crisp separation line is already done it is very easy to finish painting black on the rest of the wheel.

Use artists tube acrylic black for painting the rubber. It dries into a thick semi-gloss black coat that looks very much like real rubber, a texture hobby paints cannot simulate.

When you guys say "black", do you mean straight out of the bottle black or dark grey "scaled black"? Except for car bodies, I haven't painted much of anything straight black in ages.

WmB

For the first time in a while, I was able to use a draftsman's circle template. I'm finishing-up a Trumpeter Abrams and did the following: Paint the build wheels the color of the rubber (dark grey is what I generally use). Don't worry about overspray onto the steel rims. After they're dry, find the hole on the circle template that best fits the wheel. Tape off the surrounding holes so you don't get your hands painted. Insert the wheel in the hole and shoot it the color of the tank's camouflage. The Trumpeter's wheels fit nicely in one of the holes - the reason it's been a while for me to use this technique. I usually find too much slop beteween the template and the wheel, allowing paint to get on the rubber areas. The other way I perform this task is to chuck the wheel onto my flex-shaft tool and rotate it at slow speeds and apply paint with a fully loaded paintbrush. Aside from getting the wheels chucked and spinning evenly, it's a quick job.

Frank Kranick

SJL wrote:

Straight out of the bottle or tube. If you are into making things look realistic use artists tube acrylics to drybrush white over the tires. Then use the "earth colors" ochre, burnt sienna and so on to dry brush weather the vehicle including the tires. Use artists tube acrylics for dry brushing. You'll find it easy to use, very effective and look really goood .

i want to try that.

There isn't a whole hell of a lot you can do to lighten india ink, so yes black. Normal AFV weathering will tone it down enough.

Thanks for all of the input. I tried several of the suggestions and they worked better than what I'd done in the past.

Thanks!

Scott