Coming back from my trip to China (and missing Telford
) I had some problems to start again with modeling
.
At least I got an inspiration: In a factory producing silk cloth I got an introduction how to process silk starting from the cocoon. Wonderful material with interesting properties! � Why not using it for ship modeling?
And I found one application: The boats of IJN ships are typically fixed by two crossing belts. At first I used thin brass strips to simulate these X-shaped belts. A lot of work, too thick and a nightmare to get them into the proper shape. Paper might be even too thick, too white and not easy to produce a very thin strip. Now I found a solution I would like to share with you: SILK.
I took my waxed dental floss (I never used in in its primary function.) and used � of its width. Not so easy (I used a pair of scissors with teeth and made a small cut along � of the width and then tearing parallel to the fibers.) but the result is a very thin 1/700 belt. The fixing is easy (see Subchaser38) and I think the appearance looks good (no weathering required). Only the mint flavor of the dental floss is needless in this application (Or? ...remember my picture Subchaser 26?).
- Subchaser38
All in all I am not satisfied with this model: The airbrushing resulted in a very grainy surface
. It seems to be happened during the priming. It might be that the brushing distance was too large, the pressure too high or not enough stirring of the paint. At least a good decision to start with a very small ship to make a first trial. My next model will be the K-19 class IJN minesweeper from the same Tamiya kit. But this time I will perform a series of air brush tests before and maybe no priming at all.
Coming back from my trip to China (and missing Telford :heh: ) I had some problems to start again with modeling :shock: .
At least I got an inspiration: In a factory producing silk cloth I got an introduction how to process silk starting from the cocoon. Wonderful material with interesting properties! � Why not using it for ship modeling? :scratch:
And I found one application: The boats of IJN ships are typically fixed by two crossing belts. At first I used thin brass strips to simulate these X-shaped belts. A lot of work, too thick and a nightmare to get them into the proper shape. Paper might be even too thick, too white and not easy to produce a very thin strip. Now I found a solution I would like to share with you: SILK.
I took my waxed dental floss (I never used in in its primary function.) and used � of its width. Not so easy (I used a pair of scissors with teeth and made a small cut along � of the width and then tearing parallel to the fibers.) but the result is a very thin 1/700 belt. The fixing is easy (see Subchaser38) and I think the appearance looks good (no weathering required). Only the mint flavor of the dental floss is needless in this application (Or? ...remember my picture Subchaser 26?).
[attachment=0]Subchaser38.jpg[/attachment]
All in all I am not satisfied with this model: The airbrushing resulted in a very grainy surface :doh_1: . It seems to be happened during the priming. It might be that the brushing distance was too large, the pressure too high or not enough stirring of the paint. At least a good decision to start with a very small ship to make a first trial. My next model will be the K-19 class IJN minesweeper from the same Tamiya kit. But this time I will perform a series of air brush tests before and maybe no priming at all.