replacing raised panel lines on aircraft

The easiest way is actually to go over the missing panel lines with a knife. Of course, you'll tell me, that creates a recessed line, but if your blade is real sharp, the recessed line will not be visible, but what will be is the raised plastic on both sides of the cut. In fact, you'll only see a single raised line... Try it on a piece of plastic card, prime it then do a light drybrushing over iy and you'll see what I mean.

Did exactly the same thing with my A-10, a little over zealous with the sanding.
So there I was, regretting my stupidity and scratching my head to find a solution, when the solution dropped right into my lap. Literally!!!!!!!!!!!

My own hair!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So I grabbed some, gently, cause it hurts, gave it a wash in some acetone to remove any oil etc, wrapped it around and secured with some super glue, capillary action drew it around the model, and voila!!!!!!!!!

This was a 1/48th scale Tamiya kit, and after painting it looked perfect.

For larger models one would need coarser hair, so distract the family dog with a bone, and, well, you get the idea!

I just read this! You're kidding, right? I have two OOP kits that I really don't want to mess up. Both will be gifts and, yes...both have raised panel lines. I need to get started on one of them but haven't decided yet what to do about the panel lines.

I have used the sharp blade method. But another method I have seen but haven't tried is to use stretched sprue to replace the missing sections. The one I saw was a B-58 I think, and the builder used stretched sprue and glued the sprue in place with paint. It looked very convincing and you really had to look close to see what was the natural plastic and what was the stretched sprue.

Russ

Looking to try this technique on some older aircraft models. I would like to know if anyone has tried using a dental pick as a scribing tool.

This has been covered in a FSM magazine, but I don't know when it was dated.
The method described was the following...

On both sides of what should become the raised pannel line you place some maskingtape, in between them (which is offcourse a narrow line) you add some liquid paper (like Tipp-Ex and the sort of that), after drying you can gently sant smooth and remove the maskingtape.