Aluminium foil for the shiny hydraulic actuators

[Decoman]

I was happy with how things were going with this Italeri M110A2 kit in 1:35 scale after having painted it with Humbrol 155 (olive drab), that I ventured into adding some aluminum foil for some shiny parts.

The initial result was really good. However I still had some sticky goo when I placed one part into the other and the foil bucked a little. Luckily, that part is hidden from view. (Next time, better let things dry properly first.) I think it was some super glue that got mixed with the paint and remained a little sticky for a while (unsure).

I used regular aluminium foil for cooking. It had a slight texture to it, but I made sure the lines was aligned around the cylinder shape and not along side of it.

The aluminium foil also had some existing subtle dents in it, something I had to carefully avoid when cutting out a patch from the whole piece off the roll.

I used a pen to mark just how long the pieces had to be on the foil, and then I used a scalpel with a new blade and a ruler, and carefully cut out the shape.

I had to make sure the foil was cut into a rectangular shape with straight corners.

The foil shape covers around the cylinder shape, and then maybe 1mm extra, for it to overlap.

Without messing with the glue yet, I carefully put the foil onto the actuator part and tried to have the foil bend as good as I could before proceeding with adding glue.

I removed the foil again from the actuator part.

I then appliced some super glue onto a yellow post-it note I had placed on the table, and I carefully rolled the piece of plastic onto the table so that the glue didn't simply blobbed onto the plastic. The rolling was distributing the superglue around the cylinder more evenly. I also made sure that the glue did not get onto the part of the actuator that was to be simply painted.

I hid the seam on the underside, out of view. Taking great care to not end up having the seam on the top by mistake.

I think the foil ended up being nicely fixed to the plastic. The 1mm of overlapping foil at the seam however was probably unglued, but it did not show.

Edit: I am not 100% convinced that the actuators are hydraulic actuators. There aren't any hoses. Maybe it is some kind of pneumatic system.

I kept painting the insides of the cylinders, to create a thin layer of paint, that made the actuator piece a perfect fit without there being a gap.

Edited August 28, 2014 by Decoman

[AngstROM]

Surely they be barrel recoil dampers? Like automobile shock absorbers, you wouldn't have any hoses connected to 'em (unless you have some funky remote-adjustable set-up)...?

Lovely job, anyhow -I bet that thing could give you a bad hair day from a few miles away!