Tag: finishing tips

FLASH – The FEBRUARY Georgetown meet has been rescheduled to Sunday 2/23/2025 in the Penn Brook middle school.  View FLYER for directions & contacts.

Since it’s the building season, here are some quick modeling tips from our clubsters..

Airbrushed Ink Finishes

Clubster Harry C. was flying his new, enlarged Nassise Hellcat at the February Glastonbury, CT flying session.  This model (sidebar pics) sports a beautiful airbrushed ink finish.  A brief run-down from Harry:

“I bought the ink locally at Jerry’s Artarama (available online).  The colors are Artfinity alcohol ink from 25 ml bottles intended for marker refills.  There are earth tones, olive greens and greys that would be useful for other camo schemes.  I used Liquitex acrylic ink for the white simply because there was no white available from Artifinity.  There are colors in the Liquitex line but not as many and they are more vivid.  I used the ink unthinned in a Paasche model H external mix airbrush and it went on very dry, requiring three coats to get good color definition.  Even so the total weight gain was only on the order of a gram.  I held the airbrush fairly close to the model, perhaps three inches or so.  The insignia were done with 0.002” low tack frisket film cut to shape.  Next time I would probably paint the whole model with white to get better opacity on the color layers.  A top layer of Krylon clear acrylic would add durability at the cost of more weight.” 

Harry did a fabulous job rendering the tricky 2 tone blue/white color scheme on his Hellcat.  Airbrushed insignia too – wow!  Who’s next to give it a try?

Dollar Store Eraser Tools

Modelers are a resourceful lot.  They’re often cheap too. 

Our creative Vermont clubsters discovered that the ubiquitous “Pink Pearl” eraser makes a great multi-use building tool.  Cheap discount store erasers work well too.  Cut into small bricks (sidebar pics), they make soft yet firm hold downs for those lightweight laminated balsa flying surface outlines.  No more pin marks and the eraser bits will not get glued to the lamination.  Need a small, easily adjustable clamp for holding fragile parts together?  Bits of eraser on a long common pin will do the trick.  So, you don’t want to break out the airbrush for some simple decorations on your next model?   Carve an eraser to make your own stamp.    Use your imagination and get creative with these simple tools.