Painting small circles for wheels?

JS,

Drafting, art-supply, and even some craft stores stock plastic circle templates. Basically it's a sheet of flexible see-through plastic with holes of every dimension cut it it. Once you figure out what size circle you need to mask (using the template) you can place it over a piece of masking tape and trace around the inside of the desired opening with a hobby knife.

The templates are inexpensive, and I think the one I use covers most sizes from 1/32 to 2 inches or so.

An example: http://www.dickblick.com/zz554/76b/

Matt Usher @ FSM 

What he said.

Chris 

That template thing looks like it would help with most of them - thanks for the suggestions, guys!

I also thought about going to "MS Paint" and making small circles and printing them in gray or silver on decal paper and then using decals for the middle part of the wheels, but it seemed like I'd probably be printing and adjusting several times to get the size correct.  Anybody else tried something like that?  Did it work?

Thanks again - off to Office Max tomorrow. :)

I usually do either one of the following 2 methods.

1. Use a sharpie black pen and acutally draw the border, it tracks the recess line fairly easily. Then paint the inside with brush, the final dull coat will cover the shaprie gloss.

or

2. Use a very thin mixture of paint and let the thinned paint wick around the recess circle, then fill in the inside.

I've tried the compass method, while it works, it was just a bit more work and I'm just plane lazy.

If I understand correctly, you're trying to paint the outer black portion after the center part of the wheel is painted.  So you would need and kind of disc to mask the wheel and paint the outer edge.

But it is way easier to paint the whole thing black first and then use a circle template as mentioned by Matthew Usher to mask the outer edge and paint the center portion.  I've always had good results by doing so and you can find a circle template in any art store or even at Stapples.

Have fun

A possible alternative to a circle cutting template is a circle cutting compass.  I picked one from an arts & crafts store that is essentially it is a beam type compass with a knife blade instead of a pencil lead.  I'm not quite sure if it would go down to the size you need, but it does get pretty small, certainly a lot smaller than a penny.  It can do 1/35 Sherman road wheels which I suspect may be close to to 1/48 A/C. 

Paint the tires.  Cut circles out of Tamiya tape and mask.  Paint the rims, and with the sharp demarcation it'll look great. 

First of all, thanks again for all the ideas!  Yesterday, I went to an arts and crafts store.  They had a "cutting compass", but it only went down to 10mm (about .40") - nnot quite small enough for what I needed.

They did, however, have one of the circle templates with lots of circles from nearly pinhole size on up.  This, combined with one of my wifes scrapbooking tools called a "flexible or swivel  x-acto knife", allows me to lay the template on something like tape or label material, and cut around the inside of the template fora perfect circle.  Then, peel away the backing, and I have a ready to use mask.  The flexible/swivel x-acto knife has a very short (about 1/4") blade that turns in it's base.  Works really well for this.  Just make sure you have a good cutting mat underneath before you start.

do not - I repeat, DO NOT, try this out on the kitchen table without a good protective cutting mat underneath what you're working on . . .