The Little World

Wayne Robinson.

Who read my piece on canopy painting and replied – alerting me to a very good English drafting pen that could be used to apply precise paint lines to models. I went to the site he quoted, looked it over and spied one line in their advertisement that looked interesting.

They compared their product favorably to the use of the old draftsman’s bow-pen. Fair enough – I’ll bet the product they sell does a better job in lining model rail carriages. But the hint that the old bow-pen could also be used was enough to set me thinking…I have a number of these old pens in drawing sets that I’ve inherited. Could I be missing out on a useful tool?

Could I what…I found my grandfather’s old set of instruments and extracted the best of the historical pens with a knurled shaft. It might well be 100 years old. The metal is still in fine condition, though, and I cleaned it up with some lacquer solvent and then mixed a test pot of paint.

I dipped out 5 drops of Tamiya acrylic and cut it with three drops of X-20 thinner, picked it up into the gap in the bow, and then adjusted the jaws to give a thin line. A had the extra sprue canopy from an Airfix kit to play with…

Well, it ain’t perfect, but it’s so very much better than my efforts with even the finest paint brush that I think I will pursue it in the future for canopies. With a little practice and experimentation in the thinning of the paint, I should be able to match the results from masking and spraying.

I owe Robinson a dinner for this one and he can collect next time I am in Sydney.

* Jimmy Hatlo – Sunday cartoonist in the papers of my youth. Also drew Hatlo’s Inferno.