Raised Panel Lines, what to do?

[Grayson72]

Ok what do you do with raised panel lines? My usual oil wash technique seems like it would only highlight the fact that the darn things are raised. I was thinking of dry brushing them a darker color but it seems like that would be hard to do without getting the darker color on the rest of the model.

Stupid Hasegawa and they're old mold reissues.

[Valkyrie]

I've got a 1/72 XB-70 Valkyrie I want to build one of these days, and it has raised panel lines too. My plan for them is to scribe in new panel lines alongside the existed raised lines. Then wen I'm done, I'll shave off the original lines with a modeling chisel.

It should work... in theory, anyway...

[gnollman]

Supposedly there's a method to do this by sanding, but I'm not sure I recollect how to do this properly... I'll have to see if I can't find it in my FSM magazines....

[Grayson72]

Ok I read something on a website about just applying the wash to one side of the raised panel line (preferably the lower side). I think I'm gonna go with this technique.

[B-52 GUNNER]

I feel that raised panel lines should be sanded off and then the plastic polished to remove the sand scratches.

If you were to enlarge the model to full scale the panel lines would be HUGE!!!

But if you took a real aircraft and reduce it to let's say 1/72 scale the panel lines would hardly be visable.

I built a 1/48 scale SR-71 and sanded the panel lines off and the finish was beautiful.

Scot

[Myersjessee]

Please show us who you go at it, and what the results look like Grayson.

Good luck!

[wm cheng]

I guess you are starting on the M0 F-14 from Hasegawa?

I haven't tried this myself, but what about sanding the whole thing smooth, and drawing the panel lines on with a 2H or 4H mechanical pencil lightly after the paint process. Then when you seal it in, it might look more to scale. It seems easier than re-etching all the panel lines by engraving - however, you could re-etch only a select few such as any of the moveable surfaces. I've drawn panel lines with a thin hard mechanical pencil before (and it seemed to work great) - but only additional ones, not the whole bird yet. There are even 1/72 scale photo etched templates that have all these little access panels and hatches that can be traced out.

Good Luck!

[Grayson72]

Actually it's the 1/72 P3C Orion from Hasegawa, I'm building it for a friend who use to fly them in the Navy. The squadron markings that come with the kit just happen to be the same one he flew for.

[B-52 GUNNER]

Is this the kit you have?

P-3 Orion

Scot

[Grayson72]

Dude you rock! that's the one, thanks for the ref. pics those oughta help

Thanks again

[B-52 GUNNER]

Anytime, But Trust me when I say that if a model has raised panel lines it's best to sand them off and polish the plastic before you paint it to remove the sand scratches.

I also recommend that you paint it with either gloss paint or if you can't find gloss paint in the color you need use a gloss clear coat over the Matt paint so that the decal will adhere to the model without frosting over.

Then use a Clear Flat coat on top.

And one last thing, Use BARE METAL FOIL to mask off your windows. It's the best thing to mask off with.

It let's you see the frame of the canopy and it conforms to everything.

Scot

[kakarot]

Here's a good site that shows panel-line rescribing techniques.

http://www.clubhyper.com/reference/rescribingda_1.htm

[Sarensaas]

Micromark.com has two great tools I bought for rescribing. I cannot recall the name of the first one, but it chisels off raised panel lines without gouging into the plastic. Instead of a pulling tool like the Squadron chisel, this is a push tool that requires less power.

The second one is called strangely enough "The Scriber" and it looks like a dentist tool, double ended and hook. I bought the Hasegawa scribe template and this tool works INCREDIBLE on making tiny access hatches for my Gundams. Makes very subtle, scale panel lines and actually removes the plastic when it scribes instead of just gouging the plastic like a lot of scribers do.

Edited November 24, 2003 by Sarensaas

[Myersjessee]

Kakakarot! Great site!! Thanks!

[B-52 GUNNER]

Here is a couple photos of the before referred to SR-71 that I sanded off the raised panel lines.

I hope this will sway you to sanding off the panel lines and not rescribing.

If you were to reduce the size of the real aircraft to 1/72 scale the panel lines would be very fine to the point that they would almost be invisible.

I would understand rescribing the lines if it were 1/32 or 1/24 but 1/48 and 1/72 would be way to fine.

Consider this, If you had a 1/4 inch gap between the panels of an aircraft at 1/72 scale that gap would be 0.003472 of an inch wide. In other words Way to fine to bother scribing.

Hope this helps

Scot

[B-52 GUNNER]

And another

[Grayson72]

I was never going to rescribe, I'll probably just leave them there and maybe do some pre-shading around the areas so it will be very subtle.

[Draykov]

Some useful tools:

Scribing Tool

1/72 Panel Line Scribing Template

1/48 Panel Line Scribing Template

[Cdr Fokker]

I've got a 1/72 XB-70 Valkyrie I want to build one of these days, and it has raised panel lines too. My plan for them is to scribe in new panel lines alongside the existed raised lines. Then wen I'm done, I'll shave off the original lines with a modeling chisel.

It should work... in theory, anyway...

Hey, we might have the same model... I've been working on my 1/72 XB-70 for a while - a really crappy kit, its taken me quite a bit of puttying and sanding, and it still has some problems. It has raised panel lines and I was planning on scribing new ones as you suggested, as well - though at this point I'm going to be scribing entirely new lines for quite a bit of the aircraft as I kinda sanded a bunch of in my preparataions earilier (unavoidable, due to the location of some of the major seams in the model)

I would be nearing completion of the model now, but it got too dang cold outside to continue work out there and I don't have an indoor steup right now, so it'll just have to wait...

[Valkyrie]

I actually spent a day or so working on mine after I wrote that last post, LOL

It's one of those kits I've been working on little by little for years now... and it shows. I can see all the mistakes I used to make in it. I used a ton of Squadron putty < shudder > and over sanded it, eliminating a lot of the original panel lines. And to combat the cracking of the Squadron putty, I had filled the whole upper fuselage with resin to make it solid. And much to my surprise today, it worked rather well

So the other day I gouged out all the Squadron putty I had used, and replaced it with MoriMori. And I started re-scribing all the panel lines. It's tedious work, but it's working well. I'm using Dymo label maker tape as sort of a flexible, adhesive-backed ruler. And aside from the occasional slip-up, it's working really well. I'm now awaiting a scribe and template set from HLJ that I'll use to etch the square and circle markings and such.

And by the way, this has gotta be the BEST tool for etching panel lines ever!

http://www.hlj.com/cgi-perl/hljpage.cgi?HSGTT-10

[Gerwalker]

Supposedly there's a method to do this by sanding, but I'm not sure I recollect how to do this properly... I'll have to see if I can't find it in my FSM magazines....

I remember a FSM article about a blackwidow with raised panel lines. The guy first painted silver and then black. Afater the black paint dries he light sanded the panel lines so the silver showed up. He did it subtely and the model looked great. But this is more a weathering technique since it reproduces the wear of paint in those areas such as panel lines and ribets.

For a F-18D (Italeri with raised panel lines) I built some time ago I sanded most of the and rescribed them but in the wings I just postshaded them using Gunze clear smoke and a post-it: I painted the panel lines following the air stream direction, put the post-it note paper touching one side of the panel and airbrushed the smoke paint. The results are good and it gives the feeling that the dirt accumulated in the panel lines was dragged by the air when flying.