Pinstriping Made Easy
Dress up your models with these expert tips! PHOTOGRAPHY: GUS PIANGERELLI D
ecorating stick and tissue models is indeed an art and one that can turn a “plain vanilla” model into one that really stands out! One very effective tool that has been around seemingly forever is the pinstripe. Some claim the origins of this decorative device go back to the chariot, but for many its im- portance is emphasizing the lines of a clas- sic car or motorcycle. The tradition of using it on model airplanes was established dur-
ing what free flighters term the “nostalgia” period, the 1950s.
While Sal Taibi was filling the skies with
his latest design, the Spacer, an off-beat Californian who went by the name “Von Dutch” was equally busy pinstriping virtu- ally anything he could get his hands on. Al- though the closest Dutch ever got to model airplanes was to mount a glow Ohlsson .60 on a roller skate, he became “the Father of Modern Pinstriping.”
Few of us have the steadiness of hand or eye for design that Von Dutch had of course, but with the most simple of tools, you too can pinstripe with tissue like a pro! Why not just buy a roll of pre-cut tape and be done with it? Plastic tape looks great on iron-on coverings but for the purists among us, tissue-cut letters and stripes are appro- priate for old time and nostalgia period mod- els. And, need I mention lighter for smaller models when you are gram counting?
By Lee Hunt
Lee fabricated a series of pinstripe tools (above left) by applying two hobby blades between various thicknesses of wood material. This allows an accurate
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cut and a variety of tissue widths which can produce control surfaces (above center) as well as stripes on this T-Bird(above right) motor pylon.
APRIL 2014
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