F1 Tyres and how to make them look real

Some are still out there, maybe ebay or something...someone may be advertising in Scale Auto.

Shabo is long out of production.  Some old stock turns up at times but the only tire decals I am aware of in the aftermarket is the waterside type.  If someone is making dry-transfer tire decals now please let me know, I would love to get some.

You can paint the lettering, but better than that would be to sand off the raised letters, and apply decals or dry transfer lettering to the tire. If you go that route, you can apply Glosscote and Dullcote to the tire without any ill effects. There should still be some aftermarket companies who do that, Shabo was one of them.

I have never used gloss white for tire lettering, only the flat.  I have some that were lettered in 1989 and they still look like the day I did them.  It works well on the vinyl tires of domestic kits also.

How have you found Tamiya Gloss White on the tyres?

Les, I have done as Don mentioned and I have also used a coarse sanding stick on the very tires you are working on.  With a little time and wiping the side wall with thinner, the tires came out looking a lot like the pic on the box.  If it shines a little too much for you still, hit it with some Dulcote on the side wall.  Oh yes, the Tamiya flat white works well for the lettering.

I find a lot of 1:25/24 scale tires fit reasonably well on a Dremel sanding drum tool. I chuck that up in a variable speed dremel, and hold a sheet of sandpaper against the tread area while I turn the tool at a slow to medium rpm.

This brings up a discussion I had yesterday.  A few of us from the local model car club got together to celebrate black friday at one of the LHSs.  We met for lunch afterwards, and a long discussion began between folks who liked rubber tires and those who liked styrene cast tires.  Those of us who liked the later were ones who liked to paint tires, either for correcting the shade of color or for weathering.  The vinyl they use on the "rubber" tires cannot be painted with anything anyone in the group could find.  The styrene tires can always be painted.  Both types, however, can be sanded, to remove mold lines and to take the sheen off of them.

I guess the advantage of the vinyl/rubber tires is that they look almost okay with no work, but if you want them to look really good you have to do some work on them anyway, and it may take as much work or more than what you have to do on styrene tires.