Masking road wheels
Learn the quickest, easiest way to paint AFV road wheels using masking
Modeling is fun, but there are often repetitive processes that can seem tedious. One of those is painting tires on AFV road wheels. A circle template makes this normally monotonous job a snap.
Many tanks and APCs have five, six, or seven pairs of road wheels on each side. That makes two dozen or more tires to be painted. Make the process easier by using a circle template, which you can find at art supply stores.
To start, airbrush the tires with an appropriate color. I used Tamiya Rubber Black (No. XF-85) on this Panzer IV because the body color will be dark Panzer gray. On another tank with green or yellow camouflage, I would use Tamiya German Grey (No. XF-63).
Holding the circle template over the road wheels, find the opening that covers the tire while leaving the wheel and rim exposed. Don’t worry too much if you can’t find an exact match; later washes and dry-brushing will cover overspray or shortfall.
Before airbrushing the body color on the wheels, cover the surrounding holes on the template with tape to avoid getting paint on nearby parts.
Next, it’s a simple matter of holding the template over each wheel and spraying the camouflage color. With one wheel done, lift the circle template and move to the next wheel and repeat until they are all painted. Smaller holes can also be used to paint return rollers.
In less than five minutes, I painted all 32 road wheels on this Panzer IV with crisp demarcations between the tires and rims. Now they are ready to go on the model! If you build tanks and AFVs a lot, in no time you’ll be a pro at painting them using this technique!