bigbluesd Posted December 16, 2013 Share Posted December 16, 2013 (edited) I've been reluctant to post any of my models to this board because I'm just so #$^& bad at them at this point, I picked up this hobby in January and I've completed 10. I'm getting better with each one but it's slow progress. I decided I will start posting WIPs to hopefully get some constructive criticism and some feedback on what I can do to make my finished product better, so any comments good, bad or indifferent are appreciated! This is what I've got on my bench right now... No WIP pictures yet, there's not much to show. I primered all of my parts with Duplicolor sandable primer and went for paint on the body... I needed to find a spray can with an orange bright enough to bring back those neon 90's and the closest thing I found was Krylon Short Cuts in Glow Orange.It had that nice "hot" orange look to it that screamed 1990. I did two light coats and then a wet coat and it was a disaster. The paint went on thick and gross with a texture that was akin to snow (this is not an exaggeration). It felt like styrofoam. It must have been a reaction to the primer because I can't even imagine crappy paint being this bad, completely useless. (I would post pictures but I don't have any and I've already dipped the body before deciding to write this thread) On the plus side, once it hit plastic I realized that the orange was probably a little too strong anyways so maybe this is somebody's way of looking out for me. I've dropped it in some NAPA brake fluid to strip the finish and I am going to go back and redo it with Testor's Competition Orange that I have left over from a Mustang Cobra that I built, it's not quite as "glowy" as the other but it seems to be a reasonable interpretation of the original car. Edited December 16, 2013 by bigbluesd Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigbluesd Posted December 17, 2013 Author Share Posted December 17, 2013 This is the block I put my bodies on to spray, this is the same outcome that I had on the body from the shortcuts paint. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hgbben Posted December 17, 2013 Share Posted December 17, 2013 I'm not familiar with Krylon paints, but it may be that the paint is meant more for textured crafts instead of smooth plastic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
espo Posted December 17, 2013 Share Posted December 17, 2013 For paint tips you might look at the modeling how to section on this forum. I personally have not had much luck with Krylon paints on models, but have used several different Krylon products with great success on other things. If you can find a hobby shop that carries paints by Tamiya, Model Master or Testors you might have better luck. It just takes lots of practice. Next time your at the market pick up a box of plastic pick nick spoons. A lot less frustration. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roadkill2525 Posted December 17, 2013 Share Posted December 17, 2013 (edited) Model Master Grabber Orange lacquer is the closest I found when I did mine. Edited December 17, 2013 by Roadkill2525 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slusher Posted December 17, 2013 Share Posted December 17, 2013 I have used the short cuts and it looks great cleared... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
grayghost Posted December 17, 2013 Share Posted December 17, 2013 Looking good. And the movie was great too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigbluesd Posted December 17, 2013 Author Share Posted December 17, 2013 @Roadkill: That looks great! @Slusher: Did you use a separate primer when you used it? I'm thinking maybe that was my problem... the shortcuts paint says it is Paint+Primer, maybe it was too hot for my underlaying primer. I did notice when I stripped it that the underlying primer cracked all over the place. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
weasel Posted December 17, 2013 Share Posted December 17, 2013 Krylon is a fairly 'hot' paint and will craze plastic like crazy unless you use a 'sandable primer' before you add color...me, I like PlastiCote T235 [grey] and, if you use an 'enamel' primer, it WILL react to the hot paints... gotta use a lacquer primer [sandable]... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wonderbread Kustomz Posted December 18, 2013 Share Posted December 18, 2013 I've used Krylon before, but never the short cuts... I use color place primer as a base for Krylon ... I use Duplicolor primer sealer for all other brands of paint... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigbluesd Posted January 4, 2014 Author Share Posted January 4, 2014 (edited) My Christmas acquisition of an airbrush setup has prodded me into getting back to work on this. Put together about 100 airbrush part clips from alligator clips and skewers and separated them all out, put base color on everything. Used it as practice spraying both cheap Apple Barrel acrylics and Testor's square bottle enamels. I'm thinning the acrylics with Windex and the Testors with lacquer thinner from Lowes. Both have gone pretty well so far but I'm nervous about spraying a body with it just yet. Paid some attention to the tires last night and today... I used my little home made tire jig to put them in the drill press to sand them down and give them a track worn look (I think I might have picked that tip up around here at some point, as with most things!). Then I used the CD trick with some Apple Barrel acrylic to do the lettering. It went pretty well. Not as nice and clear as decals would be but definitely better and a whole lot faster than if I painted them by hand (made that mistake once before, never again). The end result looks great with the exception of one that I let get a little bit warm on the drill press by getting too ballsy with the sanding block. Oh well, we'll call it tire damage. Maybe it will be pitting for a tire swap when I put it on display. Tonight the order of business is re-priming the body that just came out of the brake fluid bath as well as attempting my first application of Allclad (on the exhaust pipes). Although I realized while separating out all my parts for painting that I'm missing one set of headers... no clue where it could have gone. I guess I'm going to have to scratch build a new set and I'm not looking forward to that because I've never scratch built anything yet and frankly don't know where to start. Edited January 4, 2014 by bigbluesd Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slusher Posted January 4, 2014 Share Posted January 4, 2014 Brandon, I have never use primer on shortcuts or krylon paints. When I use primer I use Tamiya it works with everything. I have sprayed Tamiya lacquers strait on bare plastic... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hgbben Posted January 4, 2014 Share Posted January 4, 2014 Never knew about the trick with the CD, awesome Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigbluesd Posted January 4, 2014 Author Share Posted January 4, 2014 (edited) I learned that one on a forum too,I think it was this one. Works really well as long as you have a steady hand and brush it onto the CD nice and thin. You have to tilt the tire when pressing to get the tips of the letters but by my third tire I was getting pretty good at it. So much for any painting tonight, the propane tank for my gas grill leaked and filled the garage and house with propane. Didn't get thick enough in the house to cause much alarm after airing out but my wife is scared to sleep in our bedroom because it is near the garage. So now her and my four year old are asleep in the room directly below my loud spray booth. DOH! Edited January 4, 2014 by bigbluesd Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigbluesd Posted January 4, 2014 Author Share Posted January 4, 2014 And Ben,a word of caution with the CD thing.... I wouldn't do it with anything other than acrylic because you WILL end up with paint somewhere other than you intend... the acrylic is easy to get off when you do. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
martinfan5 Posted January 4, 2014 Share Posted January 4, 2014 Model Master Grabber Orange lacquer is the closest I found when I did mine. I dont remember what orange I used on mine, its a little brighter then yours, and not to get all technical lol, but its a movie car, and there are a lot of scenes where the car looked more yellow then orange, so really, I think this is like building the General Lee, there is no one correct color to use Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hgbben Posted January 4, 2014 Share Posted January 4, 2014 And Ben,a word of caution with the CD thing.... I wouldn't do it with anything other than acrylic because you WILL end up with paint somewhere other than you intend... the acrylic is easy to get off when you do. Noted...thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigbluesd Posted January 5, 2014 Author Share Posted January 5, 2014 (edited) I realized there's a little hobby shop a couple of towns over that I didn't know about so I went by today to see what all they had. Sadly it's mostly devoted to RC Cars and NASCAR diecasts with a decent selection of run of the mill Revell/AMT kits at full retail prices and very little in the way of paint. On the positive side though I came across this paint while I was there for $4: The color is called "Fasflourescent Orange" and baby does it glow... exactly what I have in mind when I think about this car. Unfortunately this is a water based paint (I guess that means it's acrylic?) which is intended for painting the interior of the clear lexan shells of RC cars. Has anybody ever used this brand before? It is Faskolor by Parma International. I'm assuming it's like any other acrylic and hoping that a good clearcoat will make it look good. I also finally managed to pick up some Pledge Floorcare Multi-Surface Finish at Wally World while I was out, I'm hoping this is the same thing as Future because I can't find that anywhere around here. The price tag on the shelf said something to the effect of "PLDG w/FUTRE" and the instructions on the bottle make reference to an acrylic finish, so I'm assuming it's just a rebrand. I'm thinking this would be a good clear for the mystery paint referenced above. It will be my first attempt at Future, you may want to place bets on whether or not I'm going to have to strip this body twice! In Googling this stuff I did find somebody making reference to using the Future to thin the Faskolor, any thoughts on that? Edited January 5, 2014 by bigbluesd Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ratchetman87 Posted January 5, 2014 Share Posted January 5, 2014 If youre unsure of how a paint will react you can always spray a sample piece using the sprue so that way if it does react you wont have to strip the body. Also ive heard that using brake fluid can make the plastic brittle and may crack when trying to stretch the body over the chasis. Not sure because ive never used brake fluid. Nice trick with the tires im going to have to remember that one. When building headers you will need some pipe solder from home depot or lowes. Grab some sheet styrene as well about .030 thick. Usually ill use the cylinder head and trace the shape of it to the sheet styrene. Cut this piece out and use it as a starting point and shape it with a needle file. I only do it this way because none of the hobby shops around here carry .250 x .030 styrene square rods. If you can find it in a hobby shop near you id use this vs the sheet because its close to the size nedded just cut to length and do some minor shaping to make it resemble the missing piece. Lay the finished product over another piece of square rod and tiirace the shape of the mouting plate and shape the second piece to match the first. Now for the pipes, grab the solder cut 8 pieces about 1.5 to 2 inches in length. Super glue or krazy glue should hold the solder rods to the plastic, make sure the rod is glued in relation to where the exhaust port would come out the head. After the glue is good and set up you can bend the solder with needle nose pliers (using the pictures in the assembly guide as a reference) to the desired shape. Also i would start in the middle and work my way out. Repeat the process for the opposite side. For the collectors i usually use heat shrink tubing and paint it to match the solder. Before heat shrinking you should make sure the ends of the pipes are cut to equal lengths. Hope this helps sorry about the long post just trying to help out a fellow builder. Just stay patient and persistent and you'll see progress in everything you do. Good luck Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigbluesd Posted January 5, 2014 Author Share Posted January 5, 2014 Yes that is all great information. I had no idea where to start, thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ratchetman87 Posted January 5, 2014 Share Posted January 5, 2014 Hey no problem we all started some where and it looks like youre well on your way. Looking forward to seeing some future builds from you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigbluesd Posted January 6, 2014 Author Share Posted January 6, 2014 (edited) WE HAVE COLOR! It actually looks a little washed out in that photo with my 100w work light shining on it, the actual color is better represented in this photo: To the naked eye it is a super close match to the box art and has that hot orange look that I was really craving. The Faskolor went on really well when mixed with Future to the consistency of skim milk and shot at 25 PSI, I'm very pleased considering it was my first attempt at airbrushing a body. The only drawback was that this is a really transparent orange so it took about 7-8 coats (with the last few being really thick) to get it looking decent. It went down really smooth but I did get some funk in the paint in several places... looks suspiciously like carpet fibers and dust, I blame the liberal use of the hair dryer (I cooked the paint between each coat) and my lax cleaning standards of the man cave (who wants to lug a vacuum upstairs all the time???). Of course after the fiasco that was the first paint job on this project my standards have come down quite a bit so we're going to just pretend that it's just track funk on a race car. I would try to get rid of it but with this paint being as transparent as it is and with it being a somewhat flexible paint (intended for RC bodies) I'm afraid of what the result of sanding would be. My game plan is to do my detail painting on the body (bumper lettering, etc.) tomorrow night and then put a coat or twelve of Future over it before doing decals -- does this sound smart? Edited January 6, 2014 by bigbluesd Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slusher Posted January 6, 2014 Share Posted January 6, 2014 I would give it plenty of drying time with so many coats of paint on the body. I don't use future as a clear.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigbluesd Posted January 6, 2014 Author Share Posted January 6, 2014 What kind of clear would you recommend over acrylic/future? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slusher Posted January 6, 2014 Share Posted January 6, 2014 I use testors wet look clear mostly now. I think you can use lacquer over acrylic but would have to check to be sure. I would be sure the paint gasses out. sometimes thick and multiple coats will wrinkle and leave finger prints when you begin to handle the painted parts... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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