Ps
The pictures of the BFW version all appear to be dark wood? The profile shows a light wood oak type finish, but I guess that’s just artistic licence?
If I do go down the wood fuselage route - I’d be torn between decals and oils, the decals can look great obviously, but in all honesty, when I see pictures of wooden fuselages - it’s very hard to see any wood effect per se, it looks more like the modelling oils to my eye? What do you reckon?
Guy
Like so much (not only in modeling
) I think it’s a matter of taste. I personally love to experiment how to achieve a “wooden” finish. I used both in the past, decals (always on clear carrier film) and Oils. I think to achieve a convincing wooden finish, post- and preshading, or better: playing with different color shades, is much more important than wood grain. I normally use several shades of “smoke” (e. g. Mr hobby’s) and tinted clears (orange and yellow, sometimes some red).
I am completely with Mike, often the wood grain on decals looks exaggerated. This comes, I’d say, mainly from a bad choice of decals by the specific modeler, as there are many decals on the market that show just very subtle graining. A problem with decals can be the presence of printing dots, which are especially visible when photographed with a macro-objective. I think the clues with decals are: 1. Never use decals printed on white decal paper (no preshading possible!) 2. Always choose carefully and have a bigger selection of decals to choose from, 3. use carefully tinted clear and/or oils to avoid the appearance of printing dots. You als can tone down wood grain which appears too exaggerated by over spraying it with a diluted version of the base color.
A problem with oils can be that it sometimes doesn’t look “right”. It doesn’t look like wood grain but just like what it is: smeared paint. Therefore I personally use only a very very tiny amount of oil color that has I “rubb” into the surface with a stiff brush rather than “streaking” it. I seal the surface with gloss clear before.
One thing I am still not sure about are PE spray stencils showing wood grain. A finish that was done with these quickly looks over exaggerated I am afraid. But perhaps I just need more practice. The wood grain, however, often looks more coarse and not as fine as done with oils or decals.
Best regards
Andreas
