Paint and Finish

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You may have noticed a lot of design elements were introduced in order to 'keep costs down.'

This is no different with the paint and finish of the consoles and screen

I used no specialist tools, only normal house paint brushes, rollers and paint.

The colours I chose were not exact replicas, I didn't use FS numbers or mil-spec standards. I didn't need it to look perfect, I just wanted it a similar shade of grey.

To do this, I went to my local hardware store, looked at a bunch of colour samples on the wall and chose a colour that looked almost similar to the general photo of the outside of an A-10C I had pulled up on my phone. 

I chose one right off the wall- Dulux 'Moxa'. 

I then chose one a few shades darker for other highlights and markings- Dulux 'Hammer Grey'.

I already had a compressor in my garage, and a decent spray gun from previous non flight sim projects. I tried it on one of the consoles, but the setup and cleaning of the gun afterwards was not worth the effort.

The great thing about using MDF, it paints very well. I used a normal brush and roller, and the results were similar if not better than the spray gun.

Most all parts were painted with a roller, two coats, with a light sand in between.

Before final paint I used upholstery nails like these in order to give the wood a metal look. These are simple nails usually used to keep leather/fabric onto timer frames. All I did was draw a line with pencil, mark some equal distances and bang them in with a hammer where i thought they should go to look like a rivet join. 

No priming or anything necessary, i just went over them with a roller when doing the final coats of paint.

The seat rivets were placed in specific places, based on photos I had of the real seat.

For the console skins I just ruled a few lines and banged some in, to make it look like metal. Artistic licence used here- the real jet doesn't have rivets in this location. 

The external markings on the cockpit console skins were done using the same paint method, roller and a brush.

I initially designed them in CorelDraw with intent to print out some templates, draw them on with pencil and then paint them on by hand.

I then realised i had a Laser Engraver, so all i did was lay down masking tape on the bed, cut them out of the tape, place them on and paint over them.

The external markings are actually in reverse. They are supposed to be black markings on a light grey main colour.

I only decided to do this method after i had already given the entire thing a coat of light grey, so i decided to place the mask down and paint the entire console in the darker shade of 'Hammer' grey. Peel off the masks and the lighter grey is exposed.

I did this because I really just wanted to break up the colour a bit- i was sick of the same shade of Dulux Mmoxa on everything, inside and out. I did the outside skins dark because the inside of the consoles and cockpit were already light. I had done a coat of dark on the seat as well, but after one coat i decided it would not look right so the seat went back to lighter grey.

All the black on the cockpit is just Rustoleum 2X Spray Flat Black from a can.

This is the same spray paint i use for the top coat of the panels before engraving. Pay the extra cash for quality spray paint- the $1 cans will give you a terrible finish. You get what you pay for.

I masked the glareshield up and hit it with two coats, and the parachute container as well.

Looking at photos of the real jet, i saw this sort of material was lining the cockpit. I'm not a hundred percent sure, but I have seen similar material on the inside of Armoured Vehicles, and if its the same stuff it's called a spall lining. It is loosely fitted, and made of a Kevlar material designed to catch any projectile that somehow manager to penetrate the outer armour.

I found this stuff at a local fabric store (spotlight in Australia), and used it as a replica. I need to dye it grey, but haven't gotten to that yet. Looks the part and has a soft feel as well. Much more realistic than plain flat painted MDF.