Wingnut Wings Sopwith Triplane - Wood Effects

This process has been a bit of an odyssey but in a positive way in every respect. I've wanted to work on wood effects for some time and this is a kit where there is not that much wood and most of it is inside the cockpit so it's an opportunity to try out different approaches. As I've already said in a previous post I wanted to try out decals and using acrylics to produce wood effects, preferably without using oils because they tend to create brittleness in the plastic and leave behind too much of a deposit in crevices for my liking. Above all I can use oils effectively but I find it a bit of a chore and have never really been happy with the final result.

Pre-printed Decals: Uschi Van Der Rosten Woodgrain Decal Fine Aircraft Interior Textures

I've been intrigued by these for some time and bought a set from Wonderland Models with a view to experimenting with this kit.

The set provides multiple different veneers, both in a 'pale' and a 'rich' form so you're given a lot of choice and I can imagine these sets allowing for a lot of coverage on different interiors. My plan was to try them on the foot boards because I was reluctant to start on a more complex surface.

I wasn't sure whether the decals would be fully opaque and I wanted to have some grip so with this in mind I painted the parts with XF-55 Deck Tan. The online instructions for the decals insist that, contrary to the normal procedure of putting decals onto a gloss surface, these need should be applied directly to the matt paint surface. Using Mr Mark Setter and Mr Mark Softer I set to work and as with all Mr Hobby products the setting agents worked flawlessly.

The decals needed some encouragement to come away from the backing, but there was no tearing and they dealt with being moved about very well. Even though the foot boards are flat, they do of course have sides which need to be covered with the decal so I wrapped the edges of the decal around them. This created quite a complex set of surfaces and yet the decals settled down in ways which I had no right to expect.

The effect can be seen in the image above. The wood grain is subtle and the final finish looks like wood to me. The very slight pre-shading, as well as the main colour used for the paint surface, also appear to make a difference because the decals are not entirely opaque.

I could quite reasonably have tried these decals on various other parts of the interior, but wanted to try other approaches as well. Nonetheless, these decals left me thoroughly impressed and I'm keen to use them again in future.


Transparent Decals: Uschi Van Der Rosten  Woodgrain Decal 'Fine'

I spent quite a lot of time looking at the instructions online before attempting to use these decals. Again the view is that they should be placed directly onto a matt paint surface, but this time some pre-shading can be attempted. In this instance I used XF-15 Flat Flesh on the struts, followed by some XF-64 for the shading. The frame either side of the struts is being done by hand, using the mix produced for the framing on the side walls (see previous post) as a base.

Since I was wary of the properties of the decals, and unconvinced by the instruction to place Tamiya tape directly onto the decals as a template, I worked in small sections, starting with the bottom of the struts since any problems would be obscured within the cockpit. I needn't have worried about the tape since the process worked surprisingly well. So, you place the tape over the part and use a pencil to draw a template. You then remove most of the stickiness by applying it to the back of the hand and removing repeatedly. When satisfied that the tape's adhesion has been sufficiently reduced you apply the template to the decal, as below.

At this point you can use an X-Acto blade or decal scissors to cut the shape from the sheet. When the tape is removed it doesn't wreck the decal - the sheet is surprisingly robust.

Again the Mr Hobby setting system was used and Tamiya Cotton Swabs helped to make sure the decals conformed to the complex surface. I've never used these before, preferring instead to use standard cotton buds in the past, but the Tamiya product is certainly better because it retains its integrity and doesn't deposit fine strands of cotton onto the decals.

As you can see above, at this stage the decals looked good and the pre-shading was effective, but perhaps I needed to go for an even finer grain of decal for this area.

The online instructions for the decals suggest that at this point you should go over them with oils, on the basis that combining different approaches gives a richer and more convincing finish. I didn't want to do this of course but although it was possible to leave the decals as they were, with a top of layer of varnish, this wouldn't give a unified effect and wouldn't bring out the proper wood effect. As a result I tried using the Lifecolor wood effects as a filter/ varnish effect to bring it all together. For this the extra-thin quality of the paint makes perfect sense but unfortunately it didn't work at all, with poor coverage yet again.

Instead I tried Tamiya clear acrylics, notably a mix of heavily thinned X24 Clear Yellow and X26 Clear Orange, in an attempt to give the impression of varnished wood. This gave an OK result but it didn't really have the depth I had in mind and at this point it became clear that deciding not to use oils earlier in the process had been a mistake. Was this the end of the world? Far from it - the whole point of this is experimentation through trial and error, so I've learned a lot here.

After allowing the paint to dry for several days I followed the online instructions and used a tiny amount of Burnt Sienna oil paint on the struts. Because the paint doesn't provide the main wood grain effect the quantities used were so small that deposits were avoided. The effect is so wonderfully rich that I wish I had used it earlier in the process but, again, that's part of the learning process. I'd also like to try Burnt Umber as a possible alternative in future. The final stage, once the oil paint had dried for a week or so, was a layer of Vallejo gloss varnish.

Overall, then, this was a mixed experience, but mainly because of my desire not to use oils rather than a problem with the decals. These performed very well, although the grain is perhaps not sufficiently fine. The final effect does look like wood though.


Acrylic Wood Effects:

Some time ago I bought the iPad version of the AIR Modeller book on Wingnut Wings kits. This excellent title has a section at the end on wood effects and includes some very thought provoking ideas about different methods, including the use of different coloured acrylic paints.

Some of the cockpit details for the Triplane have such complex surfaces that decals are not a particularly realistic option, while oils on their own are probably going to create problems, especially fit issues. This provided a chance to look at acrylic methods outlined in the AIR Modeller book, so having given these parts a background of Desert Yellow (see previous post) I used a small flat brush to apply 846 Mahogany Brown to produce the effect of wood grain. This was done by starting with a knot shape and then free forming around it, using irregular shapes.

On the wooden frame at the side of the cockpit, and on the locker area behind the seat, I used 872 Chocolate Brown on the dark wood frame, over which I used a layer of Mahogany Brown to blend it in.

I also used the same mix of Tamiya Clear colours in order to provide a varnished effect, but this time it was much more successful and I now have a good base on which to add further features, such as instrument dials, metal parts, etc.

This has been a very useful learning process, with multiple effects being used to build up a convincing whole. I'll certainly be trying each of these effects in future.

Zigerastica