raised panel lines & rivet detail

Brian:
Rember that post WWII aircraft have flush rivets as do some late WWII aircraft. Wasn't it nice of the military to make our weathering easier?

From my observations, most fasteners on modern a/c are filled with a filler then painted over. Sometimes the fasteners are seen as a shadow, or the filler or primer coat may show through where the fasteners are. On many WWII planes, there are a mixture of flush and domed rivets, and the kit manufacturers often miss this, especially on older kits from the "half-basketball size rivets" era of the 60s and 70s. Generally, higher-performance aircraft will have flush rivets in all airflow areas like wings and fuselage sides, but not necessarily in interior areas like wheel wells, engine nacelles, and so forth.

As a general rule of thumb, flush rivets before & above the wing, raised rivets behind. I've seen rivets on the back of a Sukhoi that looked like they came from a shipyard! Countersunk (flush) rivets take longer to fit, you have to sink the hole first. At one point, to speed up production, Supermarine glued split peas to a Spitfire and flew it to see at what point raised rivets would slow it down or cause control problems. Usually, kit manufacturers mould rivets on too large, so bit of rubbing down won't hurt. And, Tamiya, countersunk means flush, not recessed below the skin, as under the new Me 262!

At these scales, I'd say the best answer is "whatever looks good". All the methods mentioned above can work.

I've built this Revel Phantom kit several times in the past. I don't mind the raised detail as long as I don't sand half of it off - which is hard not to do on an old Revell/Monogram kit due to fit problems!.

I am in a simlar position right now with Revelograms 1/48th F-102. Constructiion is very similar to the F-4J you are working on. This is what I did:

-preshade panel lines witha dark gray, than spray a thin semi-transparent coat of the base gray color over it. This gives a nice shading effect. The article you mentioned in FSM describes this.
-Lightly sand between coats of the base gray with 1500 grit sandpaper (to eliiante dust and other imperfections). This will subtly knock off the paint of the raised panel lines and rivits giving thin, sharp panel lines.
-Any panel lines that were knocked off when eliminating seams during assembly- try drawing in with a pencil. I lost some of this on the dorsal spine.

Hope things turn out!

Whoo-hooo! this is post 100 for me!

For what it is worth, April 1999 FSM has a wonderful article on working with raised surface details.

i just sand and rescribe