I had just tried this with great results. Using rubber cement to achive chipped paint. first apply a coat of paint to your model {Example: my M1025 humvee is going to be done in a sand color and the color under that paint is od green. so my first coat is od green.} and let it dry 24 hours. Next taking the rubber cement ,apply with a small brush or toothpick to the area of wear. such as door and hatch openings, around fenders or were ever you see fit. Now paint your model your base coat. Let it dry, then wash and weather your model. When done gently rub off the rubber cement and ta da chipped paint. I hope the results are as good as mine

Great idea, sounds like something that even I can do, thanks for the tip.

Any pics of your results?

I like this better than the ole tape and pull. If your timing is off on that one, it makes a mess, or doesen't pull off the new coat. I'll give it a try with my next little truck.

Sounds like it may be easier than the salt trick

i will try
thks for the tip

Ola people

I can recommend the Rubber cement to everybody. I used it with great succes on my Stug 40 F I did around 1,5 year back. And exactly as how Joseph describes it.

Here is a pic of the result: Pic is also a link to the gallery with more pics of the vehicle
95% of the chips on this vehicle are done with the rubbercement technique the other 5% I hand painted with diluted paint. Plus the fact that Rubbercement is really cheap

I once found a page that described another method for making chipped paint effects. I haven't tried it yet, so I don't have experience with this method yet, pics on that site looked very good, though.
First you make the tool from heat-streched (quite thin, so it does the right effect) sprue, bend it to a 30 degree angle and attach it to a modeling knife handle. Then this tool can be used as a "brush" to make paint chips.

I do chipped paint in 4 different ways:

1.Tweezer method

Undercoated with silver paint then applied the body color. After a while, I used my Tamiya angled tweezers and scrap it off like mad.

2. Cotton bud + thinner method

Undercoated again with silver paint then applied the body color. After a while, I use cotton bud + thinner to wipe off the paint.

3. Sandpaper method
Undercoat again with silver then applied body paint. Use a sandpaper grit 1200 and higher and sand it off. Quite risky and you may lost some of the details.

4. Drybrush Method
The ole' drybrush the edges with silver.

pardon my ignorance

but what's a 'rubber cement' ?

Rubber cement is a soft glue sort wich when it is dried remains a rubbery substance. It is used to glue pictures into picture albums. The advantage you have with this glue is that you can get the picture out without ruining it or ripping it apart.

Brilliant stuff especially for paint chipping

I wouldn't overly "chip" the paint of a Humvee. the bodies are composite and unlike metal seem to hold onto paint very well. I have seen pictures from Iraq and even the Humvees with damage held their sand color. One of the unique things in Iraq are the Humvees with the sand bodies and green drab hoods, doors etc. Often when one was damaged the damaged part was removed and the replacement might not have been painted yet. This can make for some unique vehicles.

My HMMWV's paint chipped like mad. Not so much showing the green under color, but the black composite material it was made of. A lot of aluminum chipping in the bed as well as the usual wear and tear from sliding stuff in and out. Just my .0175 cnets worth. "Q"

Hey Faust.....

How about a little demo or article on how you did the chipping on the Stug. Would be good reference for the rest of us!!

Is there just one brand of this rubber cement, or is there one brand better then another.

Straightedge

A recent issue of Fine Scale Modeler showed using salt to create weathering.

The undercoat goes on first,
Allow it to dry and wet the surface with water, to be chipped and apply salt (coarse salt as opposed to table salt).
Once the water/salt dries spray on the final color. Some of the salt will come off and add to the effect. Once the paint dries, use a soft cloth to wipe off the painted salt, the salt will ask as an abrasive and once everything is cleaned up - you get chipped paint !

I didn't have coarse sea salt so tried table salt on a few scrap surfaces and I found that it will create a blotch in the basecolor as well. This "discoloration" affected several of the subsequent layers that I tried to use to remedy the situation.

So if you are wondering why table salt doesn't work, that's probably the reason. Now excuse me while I add rubber cement and sea salt to the shopping list.

Could be the Iodine added to table salt. Sea salt, kosher salt are additive free,

Got some sea salt today, 500 grams for 45 cents. Pretty cheap for a lifetime supply.

Now what occured to me in the store when I didn't find rubber cement was that why not use white glue? It does not bond to plastic very well. Even on the bottle it says "bonds to porous materials" and plastic wasn't listed.

So what I'm doing next is experimenting with both white glue and sea salt on different primers. I'll post the results with pictures when I'm done.

Here are a few shots before scratching the grains off.

This is the original gunshield for the Tamiya 88mm Flak 36/37. I replaced it with a PE part and saved this for experiments. The front is primed with Tamiya RLM Grey and the back with a grey primer from a spray can. Below are both sides before the basecoat.

Salt on the left, white glue on the right, RLM Grey. Notice how the salt made an odd glazing. I don't know whether I used too much water or accidentally sprinkled very small particles with the big ones.



Glue on the left, salt on the right, standard grey primer spray. Not as much glazing on this side.



Here's the front after an application of Dunkelgelb. There's a few darker spots because some of the salt grains fell off between layers.


Same with the back, I ran out of paint in the cup so this side doesn't have as many layers as the front.



Finally a closeup from a different angle.




The gunshield is currently drying, I'll post more pics for review after I've done the chipping.

The results are in. I vote for salt. The white glue was easy to remove but lifted off all paint regardless of the primer used. The spots are also off scale and not too random, this is something I was aware of when applying the droplets but even then the result surprised me.

My only complaint about the salt is that it lightened the color significantly. It's a sort of light sand yellow now.

See for yourself:

I have used white glue before but it wasn't very good, first because the tension of the glue makes it do round shapes(not realistc) and then because it takes the primer with it and leaves the bare plastic.