1:72 Paint mask ZiL-130 double-sided (AVD)

The Soviet ZiL-130 truck

The Moscow car plant started production of this flatbed in the middle of the 1960s and did not stop it for almost three decades. Under the hood sat a spark-ignition eight-cylinder engine which could pull six tons of load and made a characteristic deep sound while doing it. Over three million of the trucks were built and their light blue cab with a white roof became one of the visual marks of the Eastern Bloc.

You could run into it practically everywhere. It worked on building sites and in agriculture, it towed tankers, dump bodies and platforms, it carried firefighters' ladders and military box bodies. The chassis became the basis for dozens of derived variants and many an example still serves somewhere in the countryside today, so it can be met alive and not only in a museum. For a modeler it is a rewarding subject precisely because of that ubiquity, because it fits a scene from a quiet village green to a military camp.

Why a mask in 1:72 scale in particular

In this scale the truck's windshield measures a few millimeters and the frame around it is thinner than a brush hair. Tracing it by hand means either unfinished corners or lacquer run over the glass. The die-cut shapes get around this work and the edge comes out accurate the first time.

The version is double-sided, so the counterpart for the opposite surface of the glass is ready too. On a truck cab this is not superfluous, because through the windshield you can see the rear window and the inner frames with it. Neither shades nor plastic parts are supplied with the item, and it is a good idea to apply the film before the cab is closed up.