How best to depict exposed bare metal bolt heads?

Started by Wes Pennest · 7 · 5 months ago
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    Wes Pennest said 1 year, 1 month ago:

    One thing that's real obvious in a lot of wartime photos of Corsairs is the presence of those neat lines of exposed bolt heads on panel lines. I understand the hairspray technique and it's perfect for larger blotches (like at the wing root) but what should I do for these VERY TINY pinpricks of silver? I've used teensy weensy dots of masking fluid before, but they're just too big and wind up taking up too much paint. Am I cursed with having to use a sharpened toothpick and itsy-bitsy dots of paint?

    1 attached image. Click to enlarge.

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    Spiros Pendedekas said 1 year, 1 month ago:

    The sharpened toothpick sounds a great, though patience-testing idea, my friend @avispa93! The masking fluid method sounds challenging. Anyways, all this extra required effort really pays off.
    Maybe a fellow modeler will present another method?

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    John vd Biggelaar said 1 year, 1 month ago:

    Wes @avispa93, for applying very fine dots of paint, I sometime use a dentist tooth pick. Not sure if this will be practical to apply each single bolt.

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    Anthony Ricco said 1 year, 1 month ago:

    Hey Wes @avispa93, what if you used the fine Molotow pen to pop a dot of chrome onto it - would that still be too large?

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    Cricket said 5 months, 3 weeks ago:

    @avispa93 first off I am soooo sorry for the late reply…I’m not getting email messages from any of the groups. I use a Tamiya tiny paint brush model Pro II # 87172 it works great. Sometimes the paint rides up on the bristles but I jsut wipe it on my hand and dip it again. But I dont do thousands of riveted :). Here is an example on my Yamaha seat etc

    1 attached image. Click to enlarge.

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    John W Summerford said 5 months, 3 weeks ago:

    Try a "silver" artists color pencil. I also use them to pick out color in cockpits.

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    Chris Ballard said 5 months, 3 weeks ago: