Rescribing panel lines

I suggest leaving the raised lines alone.

You can achieve a realistic look with shading alone.

just my two bits.

Bill

As far as scribing goes, you can sand or slice the raised lines first, or use them as a guide for scribing and sand them away afterward. But I'd be tempted to lose the raised rivets in any case.

Since they were flush riveted, my suggestion would be to go ahead and sand them off. If you want to restore the rivets once your panel lines are in, get a tiny-diameter metal tube section -- the one I use was the syringe-like dispensing tip from an old adhesive bottle, but any similar-size hollow needle would do -- and use a microfile or emory paper to 'sharpen' the tip edge. Then you can essentially 'stamp' rows of rivets quite quickly and with surprisingly little pressure required.

If you'd rather, you can mark rivet positions ahead of time with silver pencil marks -- or use blown-up drawings to produce paper templates for various locations. 

Bill:

 I wholeheartedly agree with you. This has saved me a lot of work and resulted in some great looking planes I did for folks!

Thanks for the replies. 

Greg, you are right about the flush riveting. Think there were only some areas, like the engine cowling, that had raised rivets. Guess I should just sand off the rivets and then rescribe. This would probably also allow the scribing or dymo tape to stick better. 

I'll start with some of the under surfaces, and if things don't go well, I might just go with Bill's and TB's suggestion 

Just a suggestion for your Dymo tape.  I started lining the adhesive surface of the Dymo tape with a slightly longer strip of Tamiya masking sticker sheet material of the same width as the tape.  That lets you continuously peel/stick/reposition the Dymo tape so you don't have to keep cutting fresh pieces.  You also won't get the sticky, colored residue on the model from the edge of the Dymo tape.  I'm using that technique for re-scribing panel lines here and there on the 1/48 SR-71A I'm building and it's working pretty well so far.

If you really need to retain rivets you must figure out which are dome head and which are flush head.  Some kit mfgs do not discriminate Flush head rivets do not show on painted surfaces, only on bare metal, with a very slight difference in color.

Eaglecash867

Just a suggestion for your Dymo tape.  I started lining the adhesive surface of the Dymo tape with a slightly longer strip of Tamiya masking sticker sheet material of the same width as the tape.  That lets you continuously peel/stick/reposition the Dymo tape so you don't have to keep cutting fresh pieces.  You also won't get the sticky, colored residue on the model from the edge of the Dymo tape.  I'm using that technique for re-scribing panel lines here and there on the 1/48 SR-71A I'm building and it's working pretty well so far.

 

That's a great tip. Thanks for the suggestion!

missileman2000

If you really need to retain rivets you must figure out which are dome head and which are flush head.  Some kit mfgs do not discriminate Flush head rivets do not show on painted surfaces, only on bare metal, with a very slight difference in color.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm searching for photos of the BF109E to see which type of rivets are used. So far, can see that some of the rivets at the engine cowling, namely around the exhaust stubs, seem to be the dome type. 

Edwin

 

 

missileman2000

If you really need to retain rivets you must figure out which are dome head and which are flush head.  Some kit mfgs do not discriminate Flush head rivets do not show on painted surfaces, only on bare metal, with a very slight difference in color.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm searching for photos of the BF109E to see which type of rivets are used. So far, can see that some of the rivets at the engine cowling, namely around the exhaust stubs, seem to be the dome type. 

 

You really good closeups to see rivets, but there are a huge number of photos of popuar planes out there.  I use google images myself as first search.

Ahoy Eaglecash.  What a great Idea I can start using right now.  Wish I had thought of it!  Thanks

Edwin,

If you do sand off the raised rivets and attempt to replace them in areas where the rivets are "raised" versus flush, you can use 3D resin rivets. Archer's used to sell them before they went out of business, but MicroMark sells something very similar. You can see them here: 3D surface details

They work like just like decals, and usually under paint, they're indistinguishable from the surrounding plastic detail. I've used them many times, and they're a great way to restore lost detail. Here are some I used on my recent Apaches.

One method I've used for replacing raised rivets with flush rivets is to use a pounce wheel. Greg had a great suggestion for replacing flush rivets, but a pounce wheel is an easier (albeit less accurate) way of replicating flush rivets.

Here's what my effort on an F/A-18E looks like.

Hopefully my input helps a bit. Good luck with your project! I'm looking forward to seeing your progress. 

Cheers!

-O

Thanks for the tips, O!

I have to say, the rivet decals look great and seem a great solution.

I did consider getting the riveting tool for the flush rivets. Greg's method probably looks better, but with the number of rivets plus trying to get them in straight lines plus evenly spaced, I just might lose my mind. Lol!

When I get started, will post photos with the hope of hearing the valuable input from the folks here on how I can improve. Hope to start soon as this Hasegawa BF109E has been waiting for something like 24 years now. This will be somewhat of a nostalgic build, as I built the same kit a long time ago when I was 12.

Currently working on a 1/700 destroyer, the Akatsuki, as a practice run (last time I built a ship was more than 40 years ago). Almost done with that and will then move on to another 1/700 destroyer, the Shimakaze, which is for the Japanese GB on here. Thinking to do the BF109E concurrently with the Shimakaze.

So much to do, so little time.