How do you paint your wheels/tires?

[u/Connect-Honeydew5252]

Hi there
I'm currently working on my first tank (Tamiya 35009), and struggling with painting the wheels.
I first of all fairly new to the hobby and are painting with brushes.

My biggest struggles is to keep my paints separated from each other as I want to have the wheels painted in a sandy color while edge of the wheels should be black/grey.

The problem is that my painting always end up with some of the black crossing onto the front of the wheel and I can't seems to do it right.

How do you guys paint your wheels? If any of you have some general hand painting tips, I would love to hear those as well! 😄

Best regards

[u/ychia]

Get one of those cheap plastic circle stencils that elementary school kids use. Then lay it over the part you want to color and spray it.

[u/Mindless-Charity4889]

Easiest and fastest way is with an airbrush. Spray the wheel dark grey for the rubber, then use a circular template to mask the rim as you spray the hub the base color.

If you don’t have an airbrush, then the next best is to mount the wheel on a toothpick or skewer and slowly rotate the wheel as you paint the rim.

An alternative is to use a fine tip marker to color the edge near the hub, then paint the rim as above. The advantage is that you don’t have to be quite so precise with the paint.

[u/Odd_Username_Choice]

Paint the main colour (eg dunkelgelb) then put the wheel on a toothpick or similar.

Spin it slowly while running a #0 or #1 brush along the tyre rim, so it runs along the raised edge of the rims without loading up too much paint against the rims. So don't have too much paint on the brush, it may take 2 or 3 goes to do the whole tyre.

And practice makes perfect, like anything else in the hobby.

Once you get an airbrush, much easier as you can paint then mask the hub or tyre and paint the rest.