How do you add color and details to your Roadkill series ( without adding weight) ??

From : Don Stackhouse

Permanent felt markers. Really fat ones.

For larger areas you can fog on some paint as an alternative, just enough to tint the wood, not enough to cover it. Be careful here, just a tiny bit too much and you've turned your model into a brick. The paint will tend to raise the fuzz of the wood, but you can remove that by brushing gently with a Scotchbright pad after the paint is COMPLETELY dry.

I used this method to create a faint hint of light gray on our A6M2 Zero prototype (cost about a gram), then black and red permanent markers to do the black cowl and numbers and the red Hinomarus (rising sun insignias) and the fuselage band.

The felt markers do tend to bleed a bit, so use an old (not quite so much ink in it, cuts down on the bleeding) ultra-fine-point marker for the outlines of things like numbers and insignias, then full in the middle with a fatter marker, stopping short of the outline so that the bleeding of the fat marker will fill in the remaining space between there and the edge of the outline. It's a bit tricky, so practice on some scrap balsa first.

For fine details (insignias, numbers, etc., another technique some builders have used is to print the details onto lightweight bond paper (some even sand the backside of the paper with fine sandpaper to save even more weight), cut them out and attach them with 3M-77 or other spray adhesive. This is a bit heavier than permanent markers, but not too much of a gain if you keep it to a minimum and don't use too much glue. This is the method Thayer Syme used on the RK P-38 he reviewed in R/C Microflight.

Don Stackhouse
DJ Aerotech