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Red line tires: How to


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BOOM!! Excellent tip and tutorial! I just went and ordered one of these! This'll come in mighty handy as I need to do a 'ring' of black inside the wheels of my 1/8 scale Shelby project.

Hand painting it won't cut it..........that line needs to be nice and even and this should do the trick. Another nice thing is you can adjust the radii to whatever size you need for certain particular tires or stripes.

1 hour ago, Oldcarfan27 said:

That's a great tool. Now, I have to get one!

Question - how permanent is the acrylic paint? Do you need to seal it to keep it from flaking off in the future?

I've used acrylic type paints on vinyl tires (Tamiya for example) years ago and I've never had a problem with the paint rubbing or flaking off. What's nice about this is if you mess up, cleanup is as simple as Windex (or any ammonia type product) and try it again. ;) 

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4 hours ago, MrObsessive said:

BTW, I want to add that I saved your video Dominick among my arsenal of ideas and techniques. ;)

Was that the wheel back from the kit tires? That's a good idea to use that as a 'guide' as it'll keep your red line circles nice and concentric with the tires.

Hi Bill, that particular wheel back was from the 68 Chevelle. I have a bunch of different ones on hand and even a few custom wheels that I sacrificed by drilling a hole through the center. 

 Somethings you want to keep in mind,  try to keep the compass straight up and down as much as possible. The pivot pin will help you do this by moving it in and out. Also, the hole with the pivot pin is sitting in while applying the paint needs to be small enough that the pivot pin doesn’t slip all the way through.  That was a problem with some of the wheel backs that I’ve come across. The whole was too big so I would sacrifice a wheel or find a different wheel back that fit in the tire. Also want to make sure that whatever you insert into the tire is level. 

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It's not hard, I saw a tip very similar to this one in a car modeling book several years ago and I have done it on several models after that.
Here is a model built in 2001-2002 for our now closed local hobby shop where I used that technique, I delivered the finished model to the shop exactly one week after I got the kit...so it was built in seven days.

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Edited by Force
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Hakan is correct. Scale Auto, Vol. 8, Number 4. December 1986. Redline LeFever. Some guy with a funny last name wrote this piece. He saw it at a club meeting performed by Dan LeFever of Lancaster, PA. Got his permission, back then, to share the technique. A good bow compass is essential and the Instrument needs to be very clean. I’ve done this with white lines, gold lines....for 33 years now!

oh yeah... it’s also in his book!

E2E7F951-5CAC-45A4-9BDD-885EB8A9FD8C.thumb.jpeg.92e9a36d3d634cf1fd1d1f98440538a9.jpeg

Edited by George Bojaciuk
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2 hours ago, George Bojaciuk said:

Hakan is correct. Scale Auto, Vol. 8, Number 4. December 1986. Redline LeFever. Some guy with a funny last name wrote this piece. He saw it at a club meeting performed by Dan LeFever of Lancaster, PA. Got his permission, back then, to share the technique. A good bow compass is essential and the Instrument needs to be very clean. I’ve done this with white lines, gold lines....for 33 years now!

oh yeah... it’s also in his book!

E2E7F951-5CAC-45A4-9BDD-885EB8A9FD8C.thumb.jpeg.92e9a36d3d634cf1fd1d1f98440538a9.jpeg

That’s pretty cool!

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