Cockpit painting

Yes, I do have a hint, and I just found it myself. I had the same problem, I could paint nearly anything in the cockpit but not the markings on those tiny instruments. Yesterday I tried something and it worked beautifully.

If the plastic is light colored it's very easy. Put a drop of thin black paint in the instrument bezel and let it dry thoroughly. Take an X-Acto knife and lightly and carefully scrape the black off the instrument markings, then put a drop of Future in the bezel to simulate the glass. That might take a couple of coats of Future.

If the plastic is dark, put a drop of white enamel paint in the bezel and let it dry thoroughly. Then come back with a drop of black acrylic paint. The black acrylic wil scrape off easier than the white enamel.

Maybe people have been doing it this way forever, but I just hit on it and it works perfectly for me.

HEY,
That is an awseome idea. im gonna gave to use that for my cars.

Randy

Update ... here's a picture of one of the panels for my Phantom. The four large instruments on the bottom row are a decal that is stuck on from the back per the kit instructions. All of the rest of them were done using the technique I described above, and it took about 10 minutes to do the rest of the instrument markings on this entire panel.



Notice that the whole panel is only about 7/8" long and some of the instruments are less than 1/8" in diameter but the markings on them came out clear as can be.

Another thing I've found pretty handy are metallic ink pens. Pilot and Sharpie have them out, and most of the office supply stores should have them. They are available in silver and gold, and the silver ones work very well for small cockpit details.

It depends on the era of the plane. I build mostly WW2 birds. I usually paint them flat black then drybrush white and drop in future to simulate glass. I then drybrush the switches and stuff to pick up the details.

As I mentioned on another forum in response to basically the same comment, my problem with drybrushing small instruments like that is the inaccuracy caused by the flex in the brush. Some areas get covered, some don't. The tip of a #11 X-Acto knife blade is very accurate.