Detailing with Lead Foil

[cdavenport]

In conjunction with my Voroshilovets beta build, I want to demonstrate the technique for forming lead foil using a buck.

1. Lead is poisonous, work in a well-ventilated area and wash your hands before touching your face or handling anything. I purchased several pounds of lead sheet for a project over a decade ago. The sheet is .025" thick. To use as a modeling material, it needs to be much thinner. I roll the sheet to a constant thickness of .005". The stuff is expensive if you buy it in bulk. I have a limited supply cut into 8 x 10 sheets that I will sell at $6/sheet plus shipping. One sheet will last through quite a few models when you consider that rolling a 1" square section to .005" yields a surface area roughly four times as large.

2. For the Voroshilovets, I am making a female buck which means that I will be forcing the lead through the holes cut into .5mm card from the back. The louvers that will be visible will be on the reverse side of the card.

3. Tape a section of .005" lead foil in place and burnish it with your finger to get the initial impression.

4. Using a Duncan #411 Stylus (Brickyard Ceramics & Crafts Tools - Duncan, $2.40 plus shipping) and a dry transfer burnisher (check EBay or Google using the key words, around $6), I carefully work the lead into the slots that represent the engine exhaust louvers on the Voroshilovets. Before I remove the lead from the buck, I carefully cut the lower edge of the louver.

5. Once I have burnished the lower edge of the louver flat, the exhaust looks like this.

You can also easily burnish lead over a male buck. For that matter, you can substitute whole parts with lead foil. My intention is to make the fenders from lead so that I can realistically bend and dent them.