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AFV Painting & Weathering
Answers to questions about the right paint scheme or tips for the right effect.
Improvised masking
randis
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Värmland, Sweden
Joined: May 10, 2016
KitMaker: 29 posts
Armorama: 27 posts
Posted: Thursday, March 16, 2017 - 08:39 PM UTC
Hi!

Just wanted to share my solution when painting tracks with rubber pads on. I'm currently trying to finish my first armor which is an ancient Marder 1A2 from Tamiya. It's straight out of the box, and honestly... awful.

So... I needed a way to paint the tracks in an easy way. After giving the metal a basic finish I had tracks looking like this:


I then tried to figure out a way to efficiently paint the rubber pads black. First try was to drybrush black, but that didn't really work ou very well. What I came up with instead was a little piece of custom masking made from plasticard:


Using the mask and holding the arbrush in a shallow angle I was able to get the black color pretty much where I wanted it to go. In a live fire situation I would not hold a camera, but use that hand to push down the masking thingy to the "right" depth between the pads.



This is the result ready for some dusting. While not being perfect I think it looks really good considering the amount of work needed and my inexperience with the airbrush.
Namabiiru
Staff MemberAssociate Editor
MODEL SHIPWRIGHTS
#399
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Rhode Island, United States
Joined: March 05, 2014
KitMaker: 2,888 posts
Armorama: 1,920 posts
Posted: Thursday, March 16, 2017 - 11:15 PM UTC
Pretty ingenious, Randis. I usually just hand-paint the faces of my track pads. It doesn't get the sides of the pads the way your method does, but I've normally found that once all the weathering is done it's virtually impossible to see the difference anyway.

Thanks for sharing that!

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