Adie Roberts gives Eduard''s Luftwaffe Seatbelts World War 2 fighters Steel. He gets to grip with this very strong piece of etch.

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Thanks!

Interesting - I'm looking forward to trying a set of these. I stopped using the old color PE because the color would crack and peel, but in the smaller scales (smaller than 32nd) the 'cloth' belts that are so popular now can be much more tedious.

Hi Scrodes I really did mess about bending one way then the next and fortunately never experienced any cracking or peeling, and where normal etch would have broke in my the continual bending these stayed strong

Interesting, but to be honest, I can't help but feel steel PE seatbelts are a solution to a problem that doesn't exist, at least for me.

I've hardly ever had problems with cracking or peeling paint with Eduard's current regular type painted PE seatbelts, especially after I made it a habit of airbrushing a coat of flat varnish on pre-painted PE before assembly.
Now ye olde style Eduard painted PE was a different thing (the first kind, which was phased out around 2006 or so, IIRC), the paint on them was very delicate and prone to cracking - flat-coating before assembly was pretty much mandatory.

I don't quite get the advantage of using steel, either. Again, my personal experience, but I've never had problems with brass PE seatbelts breaking. Sure, steel's tougher, but also much harder, mmost likely making removal from fret and clean up much more tedious. Also, I wonder if the steel belts will have memory, making bends keep their shape a pain in the rear. Obviously, annealing these won't be an option, unless one wants to give up on the pre-painted aspect...

But on the positive side, I quite like the paint job on these, the shading and all looks really nice. I also see they've reduced the part count, making integral all of the small bits that were previously separate parts. That's a definitely plus when bending and shaping the belts, as those small separate parts had the tendency of breaking off when making bends.