Hobby Bosss 1/48 A-10

[Red Dog]

Building Hobby Boss' 1/48 A-10 and have come across a part of the build that has stumped me.

Painting the engine fans.

What has others done/ What would you do first?

1. Paint the fans, then mask somehow (because of the steps that the individual fans blades make)

2. Attach to rest of nacelle, paint camo scheme for whole aircraft, mask camo scheme on inside of engine nacelle and then paint fan blades.

3. Other options?

 

Here's the steps that the fan blades make against the edge. Difficult to mask either way.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers.

 

[Muzz]

I had a similar issue lately with Buccaneer intakes, I sprayed the intake colour then hand painted the blades, those intakes were deeper than yours though so it was easier to hide any imperfections. I'd most likely mask the individual blades if I was in your position, will take a bit of time but be worth it.

[Red Dog]

Thanks Muzz,

Yeah if painting the blades second, hand painting would be the way to go.

Masking each blade individually... Whoa, but an option. Thanks again.

 

[Scimitar F1]

Masking each blade will be far quicker and give a much better result. 
 

piece of masking tape on a cuttting mat. Cut rectangles with the long side the width of each blade and away you go. 
 

I actually find this sort of thing therapeutic 

[Hook]

You could also use a masking fluid.

 

Cheers,

 

Andre

[Lord Riot]

I'd probably handpaint around the inside of the intake closest to the blades, then the fan blades and central spinner. After that, you could cut a thin piece of sponge to fit the face of the fan below where you'd painted the intake wall. If you're spraying the rest of the airframe it should then coat the rest of inside of the intake only up to the sponge mask. 

 

 

[Red Dog]

Thanks all for your contributions., much appreciated.

Sounds like there's no definitive or easy way to do it, so I'll do the best I can using some of your suggestions.

Thanks again.

 

Could be a market for a mask for this area in kits, or for kits to have separate fans and engine nancelles.

 

 

 

Edited June 4, 2020 by Red Dog

[fewr9fkr9595]

Wow I am surprised that in 48th they didn’t provide them a separate parts. 
 

I would spray nacelles and then brush the blades. 

[Red Dog]

Have gone with this method.

Paint fan blades.

Masked fan blades.

Attach fan blade/engine nancelle front piece to rest of engine nancelle.

Paint camo scheme.

 

Used a circle cutter to cut a mask that has surprisingly nestled into the steps formed by the fan blades quite well. Had to cut out the middle part to accommodate the center hump then masked it separately.

 

Quite happy with result, will see how it turns out.

Going to keep engine nancelles part and rudders separate to ease painting process. Very tight fit so shouldn't pose too many problems when attaching to painted airframe (famous last words).

Completely forgot to add nose weight (Bugger!) but fortunately with the engine nancelle part left off I can drop some fishing sinkers down into the nose with some CA. (Phew! Great save Red Dog)

Cheers all and thanks again for your responses.

 

[scotthldr]

You could use a set of Steel Beach resin engine covers, if the masking doesn’t work out.

[Red Dog]

Another option I hadn't thought of.

Mmm maybe on the next one.

I still have Italeri's offering in the stash. I'm doing this one up for a mate.

Cheers

[Doom3r]

I wouldn't worry too much about painting really well fan blades: just google the pictures and you would notice that front blades on A-10 look nasty (even the birds I've seen on the shows look quite nasty: blades look like corroded or something, paint chipped at places, bumps in another place, paint touch ups: basically you can clearly see that this plane is definetely not spending it's time in some climate controlled hangar). As well as area in front of them occasionally has black lines that are parralel to blades rotation. So what I would do in such case is to paint the engines and then take your best brush and paint blades in blades base colour. If you are really wat to make sure that blades color would not end up at places it shouldn't before painting blades you can clear coat the engine. Then heavely weather the blades and slight wather the area that is right in front of them to hide the places where blade color got to the places it should not.

Edited June 5, 2020 by Doom3r

[Jon Bryon]

On 6/4/2020 at 3:27 AM, Red Dog said:

 

 

Could be a market for a mask for this area in kits, or for kits to have separate fans and engine nancelles.

 

 

 

 

Sierra Hotel Models do make separate fans/nacelles in resin, and correct some of the errors in the kit. Sadly they have no UK distribution. I've looked into getting a set, but it would cost about £35 including postage from the USA 😮

 

Jon