a very noobie question,sorry in advance

[Guest]

i keep seeing reference on this site to pe or photo etch,i have never come across these in any of my kits,what are they,what do you do with them.

[AlanG]

It is normally made out of brass and the etch is left after acid has 'eaten' away the bits of metal not required for the design. It is a ( sometimes expensive) way of getting fine detail on a kit. You glue it on with superglue and probably others too but i only use superglue. It can be very irritating to use at times because the bits can be so small and take alot of bending into the correct shape. It does make a kit look great espeically cockpits but i prefer to use resin.

I'm sure someone will be along later who can explain it better than i lol

[Guest]

I think Al has just about covered it. The basic idea of Photo Etch is to make much finer metal parts that would be normally too thick if moulded in plastic or to fragile if made of plastic but moulded at the correct thickness. As Al rightly points out, sometimes this goes to the extreme and such tiny pieces of metal are often fitted deep into cockpits, such as control handles, foot pedals etc, which at the end of the day never get seen but you have the satisfaction of knowing they are there.

On armour, there are often 'upgrade' sets of Photo Etch or PE as it is commonly known, that provide things that just are not easy to make in plastic to scale. A classic example is when you see kits of lorries or tanks with a load of Jerry cans of fuel and water packed on them. Very often the kit leaves you the option to just glue them in place whereas in reality, they would be held in a 'cage' made from strips of thin steel or at least straps. The kit manufacturer either leaves tis off as getting it in scale would not be possible or, worse still, mould it onto the Jerry Cans, neither a good option. An upgrade kit of PE will have very thin parts of brass or steel that can be built up to create this framed cage and improve the look of it while retaining the scale as near as possible.

It very often does need bending for parts like this and, again as Al points out, this can be a bit tricky until you get used to working with it. A strap cage as described above would pose no problem but sometimes you get such as a tool box that needs to be folded from a flat piece into the finished shape. This is obvious (mostly) from the piece where these bends need to go but they need to be exact and good 'sharp' bends so that the piece forms correctly. To achieve this you can get special pliers for bending PE or, like me, a good pair of long nosed pliers that have flat mating surfaces and a good sharp edge, rounded ones are not as effective. There are also quite expensive bending jigs that are very good but the cost is only worth it if you use a lot of complex PE.

As Al rightly says, sometimes it is not so easy to bend, especially when it is a fairly thick steel material. To enable an easy bend the piece must be briefly heated and left to go cold so that it anneals and softens thus making it easier to bend into shape. Again, this is OK on a decent sized simple piece but a small meta origami piece can be a nightmare until you gain experience with it.

A more recent innovation with PE is Coloured Photo Etch. This is the same material as ordinary PE but one surface has a printed and, sometimes lightly textured, coloured image on it. This is often done for side panels in cockpits so that very fine detail ready 'painted' can be achieved by sanding the plastic raised detail off and sticking the PE part in place. You ether love or hate coloured PE as, although it looks great, it is flat and has no raised detail. This is OK if just looking down at it but may be lacking if you can see it from where you would expect a 3D or full relief piece. Also, the colour is not always just right and, if you have painted the rest of the cockpit, for example, the PE may be obviously different. The trick is to try to match your paint to the PE which some, not me, would regard as inaccurate.

Where coloured PE does come into it's own though is for seat belts, often the hardest bit to get right in a cockpit and coloured PE seat belts is a very nice finishing touch.

Lastly, never apologise for asking a question, no such thing as a stupid question and we try not to give stupid answers on here, although sometimes I do :lol

[Guest]

thanks a lot,i have also seen them on e-bay but did not have a clue what they were.