Some of the Various Ways to Scribe Panel Lines when Making Models

Panel lines add a lot of detail to a model. If you a new to model making you may not know why you need to be able to scribe panels lines. Some of the more common reasons are:

• The model kit doesn’t have many panel lines.
• When you are scratch-building a model.
• Sometimes a model kit might not have very deep panel lines. If this is the case they won’t look very good when you do the panel line wash.
• Sometimes you have to sand some panel lines off during the build process.

In each case you will want to be able to scribe panel lines because:

• A model that does not have any panel lines looks more like a toy than a model.
• You’ll want your panel line washes to be effective.
• A model that has partly sanded off panel lines does not look very good. If you want your models to look good, taking the time to fix up panel lines is important.

There are a variety of panel line scribing tools. They come in different thicknesses, which is especially useful when:

• The model you are working on has different sizes of panel lines.
• When you are working on model kits that are different scales.

Below is a video tutorial that shows some of the various panel line scribing tools and how to use them.

You might think it is hard to scribe straight panel lines. This is not the case once you know the tricks to doing it, combined with a bit of practice.