What's your painting method?

I paint as much of the finished model as possible but things like road wheels and drive wheels should be done off the model. Usually my sub-assemblies for painting are as follows;
the turrett, the hull, and the wheels.

I applied a trick seen in FSM a few months ago. A modeler had put bombs on an electric motor to paint the stripes on the front. I now use this method to paint the black outer edges of road wheels after I have airbrushed the center the desired color. It works great and it means not having to make circle shaped masks or having to perform careful handpainting.

Sometimes certain vechicals require that you have to paint in sub-assemblies. I've recently strated to do all my road wheels on the trees if possible. First you can really paint and cover well. Second the area of conection to the tree is usually the rubber part. For that i use a different method for crisp wheels. Paint your base color on the trees, you can even apply your secondary colors also. After it drys i cover it in a akrilic clear coat. After that dries and while the wheels are still attached to the tree, i use a thinned black oil paint that i let flow around the rim. After this dries in a couple of days here is the payoff. The thinned black paint is very easy to remove with a #11 xezto blade. THen hit it again with a flat clear and its solid. It might seem like a lot of work but like any system it really works well. I can even assemble link-lenght tracks on the model and paint it all while it's on the vechical. Good luck and if you have any questions e-mail me and i can send you pictures of one i have that i'm doing right now. Bill

Wow! These are both very good techniques to try out. I will definitely put these to good use on this model. Thanks again for all of your help. It's great to have such a great resource to get advice from! It's great to be able to get solid tips before I try something and risk losing a good model. Thanks again!

You can paint all pieces individually, or in subassemblies, or assemble the whole thing and then paint it. Thats the good thing about armor models, not a whole lot of variation in paint and not a lot of decals.
Whatever floats your boat!

To nwilliams

"A modeler had put bombs on an electric motor to paint the stripes on the front. I now use this method to paint the black outer edges of road wheels"
Could you be more specific about this electric motor? What EM? and how to use.
Thanks