Hi all,
I recently read an article in a magazine in which the painting of the german insignias were painted on with a photo etch mask set. Personally I never knew they existed and thought the stick on paper variety were all there was to use. The idea of having a reusable mask is very appealing. Does anyone here use them and if so could you please point me in the right direction to a store or manufacturer that sells them please?

Cheers all

Hi,
R&J Products has PE stencils under the "Stencilit" brand. I have some German and US stencils and they work great. There are MANY sets to choose from. See www.rjproducts.com for their catalog. Choose the product line menu to find the brand and get the whole line up. I don't know of any other shops that carry this line of stuff, though I'm sure they are out there. Stencilit is a UK based company.
Plasticat

I have a few of those Stencil-it sets and they are cool but are tough to get to sit right on anthing else but a flat surface... I have used some of the Eduard masks and they worked great ..I did the opposit to normal ..I painted a spot white and then added the star over it and then painted to OD over it and then removed the masks to find perfect stars ..

Rick

Lion roar do a set for German crosses and Allied stars and numbers. I have the allied set which is great http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=2588&item=5989718721

Thanks for your help all. I'll check them out as I think they'd be quite handy.

kind regards

hey Matt.

here is a link to a review I did a while back of lionroars allied stars and numbers PE set.. with some test results. The smaller numbers can be a little fiddly but the stars seem to work great... I plan on useing them on the M10 i'm working on instead of using decals.

Review of PE U.S. stars template.

this e-bay seller almost always has them in his e-bay store. and if you don't want to bid on em his buy it now pricing is about $11 per...

link to e-bay item

this is the sellor I got mine off of with no worries.

I have used both PE and stick on "reverse stencils" like Bear. I must agree the Stick on variety is superior.

Agree totally and for those of us who build Allied or, worse, Commonwealth, subjects the compound colour markings are virtually impossible to do on the vehicle without brutal misalignment or infinite fiddling to lock down the mask for each piece of the marking.

I use them to paint markings in the colours I like onto clear decal sheet. This works really well for Blue and Yellow Drab US markings and multi-colour Formation adn tactical Commonwealth markings.

Trying to get serial numbers straight as a single masked marking is virtually impossible. As seperate decals it works pretty well, but you end up with a lot of decal edges to fair into the rest of the finish. For these I ususally use dry transfer or waterslide.



Steve Zaloga has told of using the PE masks to cut out frisket shapes and then using them like the Eduard masks above. Sort of reuseable templates to cut masks as opposed to masks themselves.

Paul

url=http://www.greatmodels.com]linkname[/url] has a number of PE stencils that you can look at and buy (road wheel stencils, campaign insignia, national symbol stencils for both WWII and modern periods. My experience with them is they are okay, but not as useful as the concept likely sounds at first blush.

Ooops...make that [url=http://www.greatmodels.com/url]

The good link to Great models:

http://www.greatmodels.com/

See also some PE Masks at Hobby Easy webshop:

U.S. Military vehicle paint mask
WWII German AFV nation Insignia & unit badges

HTH.