The Best Panel Liner for Gunpla

Three kinds of panel liner, and why it matters

Panel lining is one job with three unrelated products attached to it, and buying the wrong one is how people end up with a crazed shoulder or a smeared, gray-looking mess.

An enamel wash — Tamiya Panel Line Accent Color is the archetype — is thin pigment in a petroleum solvent with a brush in the cap. Touch it to the edge of a groove and capillary action pulls it along the whole line for you. You then wipe the excess off the flat surface, and the line stays. This is the fastest route to a convincing result, and the solvent is also the risk.

An oil-based wash like Mr. Weathering Color works the same way but stays workable for far longer. That sounds like a small difference and is actually the whole argument: a slow-drying wash can be wiped back thirty minutes later, selectively, leaving exactly the gradient you want. An enamel liner gives you about two minutes.

A marker is a felt tip. You draw the line into the groove yourself. Nothing flows, nothing needs wiping, nothing needs thinning, and a water-based marker is safe on bare pre-colored plastic that a solvent liner can attack.

The bare-plastic warning nobody reads first

Enamel and oil-based liners contain solvents. On a painted, clear-coated surface that is fine — the paint film is the barrier. On bare polystyrene, and especially on a part that is under tension (a tight polycap socket, a snapped-together peg, a thin antenna), the solvent can wick into a stress point and craze it. Crazing looks like a web of fine white cracks and it does not come out.

So the honest order of operations is: if the kit is bare plastic, panel line with a water-based marker, or lay down a clear coat first. If the kit is painted and sealed, an enamel or oil wash is the better tool. Our matte topcoat picks cover the clear coat that makes the switch safe.

How to wipe back without wrecking the line

The wipe-back is where panel lining is won or lost, and it is mostly technique rather than product.

• Let it dry properly first. Five to fifteen minutes for an enamel liner. Wiping wet pigment drags it out of the groove with the excess.
• Wipe along the line, never across it. A cotton swab dragged across a panel line scrubs the pigment straight out of it.
• Use a barely-damp swab. Dip, then squeeze most of it out on a paper towel. A soaked swab floods the groove and you start again.
• Stop early. A faint, slightly uneven residue on the flat surface reads as dirt and shadow at arm’s length. A surgically clean panel reads as a toy.

Which color liner to buy first

Black is the obvious choice and the wrong one on most kits. A pure black line on a white or light gray Gundam reads as drawn-on, because real shadow in a panel gap is not black.

Gray on white and light panels, brown on red, tan and desert schemes, black on dark gray and black armor. If you are buying one bottle for a standard RX-78 color scheme, buy gray — it is the one that looks accidental rather than deliberate, which is the goal.

What to buy, in order

One marker and one bottle of liner covers everything a first few kits need. The marker is what you use before you start painting; the bottle is what you use after. Neither replaces the other, and together they cost less than a single Master Grade kit.

If you are still assembling your first tool set, the beginner Gunpla tool picks put panel liner in its proper place in the queue — after nippers, a knife and sanding sticks, which is the order the build itself demands.