IPMS/USA Reviews

There is somewhat of a recent trend in home furnishing circles that gives renewed life to older furniture and kitchen cabinets. The painting technique of which I speak is dry brushing. The trend has even caught the eye of Bob Vila, once and former host of the PBS series 'This Old House'.  Bob is no longer affiliated with the program after lambasting (allegedly) a homeowner for being a lazy twit, but that's a story for another time.

This dry brush technique involves dousing your paint brush into the paint of choice, removing almost all of it from the paint brush bristles and applying the minute amount of remaining paint onto the selected object. In the case of a home improvement project that might be cabinet doors or the odd tabletop but for our purposes this missive will focus solely on scale models.

I have been using enamels for many years (decades) now. Enamel hobby paints are getting harder to find and there are the health considerations on enamels, so I have been exploring different acrylics options out there. I was excited to see I had the chance to review the AMMO products, as some of my modeling buddies had good things to say about them.

Readying the AMMO website, you learn that these paints are odorless, water soluble, and non-toxic. All of those above make these paints interesting alternatives as non-toxicity is a great thing and odorless makes the rest of the family happy.

I have to say that I did find a very faint smell on these paints. It is not strong at all and it is not offensive nor headache-inducing as enamels or lacquers. The best I can describe the smell is 'earthly'. A bit like mud or clay, from a pottery workshop.

I have been using enamels for many years (decades) now. Enamel hobby paints are getting harder to find and there are the health considerations on enamels, so I have been exploring different acrylic options out there. I was excited to see the chance to review the AMMO products, as some of my modeling buddies had good things to say about them.

Reading the AMMO website, you learn that these paints are odorless, water soluble and non-toxic. All of those above make these paints interesting alternatives as non-toxicity is a great thing and odorless makes the rest of the family happy.

I have to say that I did find a very faint smell on these paints. It is not strong at all and it is not offensive nor headache-inducing as enamels or lacquers. The best I can describe the smell is 'earthly'. A bit like mud or clay, from a pottery workshop.

This set is designed for Academy's new F-14A kit. The set provides masks not only for the canopy and the windscreen, but also for the tires or wheel hubs.

There are three parts to the windscreen mask, one for each side and the central panel. The main canopy has 4 parts for each section, two for each side. The instructions advise you to cover the rest of the canopy area with liquid masking, but I prefer to cut small strips out of the unused parts of the masking sheet and use these strips to mask off the rest of the canopy.

After masking the canopy and tacking it over the cockpit, I painted the canopy frames with flat black as this is the interior color of the Tomcat canopy. When this had dried, I then painted the canopy light gull grey when I painted the topside color as I was building an early Tomcat. After painting and decaling were complete, I removed the masks from the canopy sections and discovered a perfectly painted canopy.

Background

Brengun is known for its range of photo-etched sets and resin accessories for airplane models. They also produce model kits in 1/48th, 1/72nd and 1/144th scales. Brengun's product line includes several scales for resin accessories, photoetch, paint masks, and resin and plastic kits.

Their products are available directly from an e-shop or from distributors (list included on their web site). I checked the USA distributors as listed on the Brengun website but found none of them listed this product at the time of this review.

Contents Description

The subject set includes two pairs of spoked wheels and one set of "pie pan" covers. The parts are cast in a medium grey resin, with crisp detail (tread pattern, spokes, and bolts), and flat bottoms representing weighted tires. Side walls include nice, raised detail. The opening for the landing gear axel is a shallow circular depression that will requires some careful drilling out to provide for a secure attachment to the kit's landing gear.