How to do Chips/Chipping on a pick-up truck?

[Guest]

Hi, many thanks to the answers from previous questions that I have asked.

I have another one.

I am building a Plastic 1/24 American pick-up truck. The paints are acrylic.

The main colour of the truck is Deep Green from Tamiya paints.

I want to try and get chips put onto it. What is the best way. I have read in a national model mag, about pens?

If so, what type + colour to get and how to put them on?

If using paints? what colours look good + how?

Many thanks

Garry

[Guest]

Here's one way Garry. I;ve used it myself and had good comments about the results

-Paint the area to be chipped, in bare metal or rusty metal colour etc.

-apply copydex (latex glue found in art / stationary shops) with a torn scourer pad, 3m or the like, from a supermarket

-paint the base colour over the top and allow to dry

-rub off the areas "masked" by the latex glue.

Hey presto, paint chips...

hope this helps

Stuart

[tr1ckey66]

Hi Garry

Stuart's suggestion is a really good one. If you want something even easier then simply use the scouring pad on its own.

1. Paint the model (which you already have)

2. Take a piece of scourer (about an inch sguare I've found to be best), now scrunch it up and rough it up a bit (this is to make the resulting marks more random).

3. Mix a mixture of brown and dark grey acrylic

4. Dip the scourer into the mix and then blot most of it off on to paper or card. Practice a few marks on this paper.

5. Once your satisfied you're getting the right kind of marks you can apply this to the truck.

6. I think the key to the success of this is to think where the chips would actually be on the real vehicle and to take your time.

Here's what the result looks like on a Sherman I built some time back.

Tasca Sherman V 11th Armoured Div - Scale Models Gallery

Just realised you probably want a technique that's a little more refined for a 1/24 truck so Stuart's suggestion may be the answer (that's if you haven't put the base colour down first).

Hope this helps and best of luck with the truck

Paul

[Ian M]

An other simple trick is the salt chips

As said paint the parts to be chipped with a suitable undercoat, say silver or a nice rusty brownred. Leave to dry.

Find some salt, The course type that you grind your selv works well, you get a nice mix of tiny, small and larger bits.

Spray water on where you want the chipping to be then sprinkle with as much or as little salt as you wish. Leave to dry AND DONT TOUCH IT or the salt falls off!! :-(

Onc that has dried, spray (carefully) with your colour of chioce. In you case green. Remeber the only thing holding the salt on is water so not to much blasting away with the air brush; you WILL blow the salt off!!!

When the whole thing has dried and is safe to handle, take a fairly stiff paint brush and brush the salt off.

The added bonus with this way is that where paint meets salt you get a small edge which gives the effect of the paint peeling off the car from the primmer, or that it has been chipped by small stones knocking the paint off.

Now you have three ideas. Hope you are not to confussed.

Ian M

[stona]

I do aircraft but a chip is a chip right! No rust on aluminium airframes though. I have used a combination of all the above techniques.

1 paint your subject in a metal finish before applying your paint. This you can chip in various ways. Use a needle or tip of a scalpel to make fine chips in the surface. Rub the paint off the metallic base coat with fine abrasive to simulate a high wear areas (wing walkways,maybe the bed of your truck)

2 The scourer or sponge method. As post above,I use a sponge. My only added tip is don't thin the paint for this,the thicker the better for once.

3 Apply individual chips with a paint brush. You need to be careful and use a very fine brush.

4 Pens and pencils. You can get these in various colours from art supply shops. I don't use pens much as I find I can manage with a fine brush. Silver pencils are good. I tend not to do individual chips but rather apply some pencil and then rub it over the area I want distressed. See the "wear" on this Spitfires wing root/cockpit entry.

Whatever system you try be careful not to overdo it,it's very easily done. Think about the colour. Are you trying to show a primer,bare metal or maybe some rust. If you are going for metal showing, I'd steer clear of very bright or silver metallic colours. Something like Humbrol 56 (dull aluminium) or even a grey colour will look much subtler. Finally think of scale. You will notice a chip the size of penny in the real world but imagine how small that is even at 1/24 scale. It's all to easy to cover your model in areas of missing paint the size (to scale) of dinner plates!

Last bit of advice is to practice whatever you decide to try on something that doesn't matter. You will find that you adapt and refine the techniques we've outlined above to suit yourself.

If you haven't got an old model then the plastic from old milk "bottles" makes a good test bed.

Oh...good luck.

Cheers

Steve

[Guest]

Wow, thanks very much guys, Much appreciated.

Have a great weekend, whats left of it.

Cheers

Garry

[Guest]

Glad to help Garry. By the way I also use Paul and Ian's methods, however I have no photographs to show it. but I can say they work rather well

Stuart

[Ian M]

While we're at it, what about the hair spray method. (having writen this I came to think; this method will not be easy if at all possible on gloss paint.)....

As for the others, prepare the model for paint and give it the required under colour. When that is dry, De-cant some hair spray; the cheaper the better so stay away from the waterproof super dupper fixed forever type of thing your wife pays a small fortune for!! Be carefull decanting the stuff. Use a jar and put a cloth over the rest of the opening. If the spray goes amok you WILL get hair spray every where. (And its very sticky in liquide form). Use a brush and paint the areas to be chipped with the hair spray from the bottle.

Once dry paint as normal. Once that is dry the fun can begin. Clean water, soft brush, toothpicks, cotton buds and thin stiff wire at the ready. Wet the areas to be chipped. You will need to keep at it untill the top coat of paint has had water enough to soak through the paint and get at the hair spray. You can try every once in a while untill something happens.

Take the sharpend toothpick and stab it at the paint. If its had enough water, the hairspray will loose its grip on the paint below it and chip or flake off. Stab, jab and scratch away until happy.

Ian M