Greg Wann

While most experienced painters may know what to thin it with, I was not certain. My first attempt was to figure that if the remover removed it, it would thin it as well. BAD IDEA! In my area we have SALLY BEAUTY supply stores. And sure enough they carry a four once bottle of thinner for about a $2.50. If you get a card I think it is cheaper. They carry all kinds of cool colors too. I'm kind of curious why all the big box stores sell all kinds of removers, but they sell no thinners. Like Tamaya paint I think they are some kind of hybrid paint. I painted a seat once with Tamaya racing red and two hours later I could not get it to come off. The only thing that would budge it was MR. PAINT REMOVER. That stuff smells kind of like SASSAFRAS tea. Here is a Car I built and put nail polish on it. Yes, I know the spoiler is on backwards. It was a poor fit either way and I was not paying any attention to what I was doing.

I have airbrushed nail polish with pretty good success. Actually it dries very quickly and I have found it to be, well.....Hard as nails! After it dried I wet sanded it with a 2400 cloth and then polished it with my Bare Metal Foil plastic polish. I would post a pic but not sure how.

It is a poor way to run a business, I just don't get why somebody would want to rip somebody off like that. Pretty soon a caster will have no customers. I joined the Cactus Car Model club back in 2005 and took an interest in resin casting. I have been shown parts that other club members have purchased and I cannot believe some of the poor quality of parts that casters expect people to pay big money for. What if the big name kit makers gave you parts that has lots of detail but you have to sand and whittle it into some form before you can even use it. I have a personal problem with parts being cast from one piece molds. I don't ask for any money until the parts are made and it is packed ready for mailing. I have always got something around the house to do and a regular job to go to too, so for me it does take awhile sometimes to get parts made. It does not help that I am ADD and I bounce around at all the stuff to get done. Right now I am building a air compressor by attaching it to a small tank and a pressure switch and getting it wired up. I'm attaching it to a seven gallon portable air tank.

Hi John. Very nice as usual. Just want to know if the black chrome is from that chrome powder I sent you? I have not tried mine yet.

I only make two part molds. Small parts like wheels and dash parts, etc, I mix up a small amount of silicone and pour it in the detail and run it through my vacuum chamber a few times. If I just put in a little and let it set it just about always gets a tiny air bubble in it and in this scale it looks bad. You could put just a drop of silicone in to start out with. Take a tooth pick and baby set it until you are certain no air bubbles still exist. Let the silicone cure completely and then build up another layer until you get what you want from it. If you don't do this or have the equipment to vacuum it a tiny bubble will form next to some detail. When you make the resin part a tiny bump of resin will appear on your part. Most of the time they will remove very easily because it is round it should knock right off I have also experimented in the beginning to correct molds that have had air bubbles in them. It is a tedious task. I have used super glue, silicone grease and of course the silicone I use to make the mold. Resin casting is a huge learning experience. It takes a good bit of equipment and space to do it in. I have built a good bit of shelving to store molds on too. I would like to see how Modelhaus stores and keeps track of his molds. That in itself is a big task.

Very nice.

I don't build much myself. I think most people use the chrome and not the ultra chrome. Some say the Ultra chrome is harder to work with, like it is thinner or something.

WOW!! That is really cool!

http://www.rocketfin.com/model_car_links.html Here is a wonderful place to find things all model related. You can thank Bruce for his dedication to this excellent list.

The three thing happens to me also. It's jut weird. Sorry to hear about your car. On the upside of your situation you are lucky to have noticed it at home. I could tell many stories of my 93 S10 breaking down right in my driveway. My best one is when I drove it to Indiana and back and the next night after getting home and going back to work the next evening I let the truck pull into my driveway to fast and it jumped over the curb to my driveway. As it jumped over the curb the old ball joint gave and my front right tire fell into the inner fender. If I had been out on the road and that happened doing 70 or 80 I most likely would have totaled the truck and me. I had to have it towed for repairs. The main computer failed at home and a freeze plug gave way, Distributor wired ground out on the firewall, flat tires, and more.

I can play a stereo. I do have a nice Alvarez Yairy or something acoustic guitar I bought back in the 80's. Never stuck with the learning part. It sure is a shame John Rutsy(RIP) didn't stay with the band. I have quite a few Rush CD's. I'm a Pink Floyd fan too. David Gilmour did some albums on his own that are really good. Nick Mason did an album titled (Fictitious Sports) it has some off the wall music but I like it. Smoked a good bit of you know what listening to this stuff. I'm from Indiana. A couple of favorite old Indiana bands is ROADMASTER, They made five albums. I have three that I found released on CD. And a group called THE ELECTRIC AMISH. They took famous rock songs and wrote Amish words to them. Really funny stuff! For 96 cents I went to a Roadmaster concert at the Mars Theater In Lafayette, Indiana. They played for two hours. It was only 96 cents because the radio station Z96 promoted the afair. It was my first concert experience too. This was in 1980.

I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy

Very nice! I give great praise to anyone with this kind of talent. Scratch building is a real talent.

WOW! That's really cool!

I too can conclude about a scale to do the weight measurements. I bought one of those little electronic jobs cheap off of Evil Bay. It has a 500 gram max witch is not bad but would shut off in the middle of my weighing process. And mostly give a different reading every time the same container of whatever was placed on it. Another thing I would suggest you try to do is get a lab type plastic beaker. a 25 ML is a good choice. They are smooth inside so resin is easy to mix They are small. I did take my medicine cup I got from my first Alumilite start up kit and measured out 2.5 ML of alcohol. I poured that in my 25ML beaker and marked a line with my exacto knife. I did the same with the teaspoon measurements. I use some 50 ML size ones also. Those little medicine cups to me are problematic. How much do I dislike them? Let me count the ways. 1. They are thin and flimsy. 2. They don't have a pour spout like a nice beaker does. I found it to be helpful. 3. As wonderful as they are for having many types of measurements the lettering is raised on the inside surface and there are little raised things in the bottom to make them easier to come apart when they are stacked. This a place where unmixed resin can possibly cause problems and the free Starbucks coffee stirring sticks will catch as I am stirring and cause resin to flip out of the cup. 4. I'm thinking! OK the downside to using an expensive beaker. 1. You will need to keep it very clean with alcohol after pouring resin. If you forget and it cures on you, you will have a terrible time getting the resin out. Spraying some mold release in the cup and letting it set for awhile before you mix the resin in it will help if it cures and not effect the resin. You want the carrier or whatever you call it to gas out before mixing resin in the beaker. 2. there is an expense of keeping alcohol and TP on hand for keeping this tool clean. It is an important tool. 3. You must be certain to actually get the bottom edge of the beaker clean. The area where the side and bottom meet is sharp and not rounded so making certain that no resin can get there and cure. The free Starbucks coffee stirring sticks will find it by dragging on it if it is there and will splash resin out. Why do I go to all this trouble? Because I make really good parts. How do I know I make really good parts? Because I have some great guys in a couple of model clubs here in the valley that tell me I do. The other really interesting reason to me is that I have been showing my resin work on another forum pretty much since I started and oddly enough is that I get no criticism. Hey, I'm still learning. I see guys show there model builds on here and get beat up over them. Bob Peoples (RIP) introduced me to Mike Hanson a professional model builder in Mesa. Mike looked at the parts I brought and he was really happy and told me my parts were Modelhaus quality. That made me feel pretty darn good too. I have done some work for him. Since a lot of people want to know what is involved in the part making process I decided I would post my work and become a lab rat. It really sucks Gregg closed the joke thread. I had a couple of good stories to tell.

Evil bay is a good cheap source

A very dated joke: General Motors announced today that it would be putting the light dimmer switch back on the floor board. There were too many university engineering graduates getting there feet tangled up in the steering wheel. Q: Why did the one armed guy cross the road? A: To get to the second hand store.

One other thing I learned to do from experience. If there is any sticky resin left in the mold I take a plastic shoping bag and push it firmly into the goop. It pulls free from the mold and sticks to the bag so it won't damage your mold. I have scratched the important surface of the mold rendering it useless to me. You might still be able to get a free can of mold release as a sample from Price Driscoll. I think Jeff the Time Machine resin guy told me about it. If you are doing serious casting in an area where humidity is a problem you might buy a dehumidifier for your room. Just an idea, it's a step I would do. Greg

http://smcbofphx.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=rs Here is a link to our forum that I have been posting on for sometime now. Be sure to jump to page 2 and start reading the bottom post. This is my first post. I had some idea of resin casting from the 70's. I joined the Cactus Car Model Club and met Matt Conte the Dencon Resin guy. After I asked the fourth question he stopped answering so I decided to just dive in and pull it out of my butt! I decided I would just post pics of what I was trying to do and just make my supposed secrets to everyone while I was learning too public. Jeff the Time Machine Resin guy did have me call him and I talked to him on the phone and he was a great help. I owe my success to my thinking up my secret weapon and placing parts on individual pyramids of clay. I guess I could call it my intellectual property. But then again others may have already discovered this. Greg

Did you see the Cosma Ray that John Teresi built? I made those parts. I do not heat the mold for the bubble top parts. I have learned to be patient and they usually turn out great. I do use Price Driscoll Ultra 4 paintable mold release. I have used this spray on the bubble mold too. I spray it on and wait about 30 minutes and then take a paint brush and smooth it out. I am probably fortunate to be located in a low humidity area. I have tried the Novus stuff. There is just no comparison. The BMF polish is just much better! http://smcbofphx.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=wanted&action=display&thread=388 Here is a link to the mold creation of the Cosma Ray.

http://smcbofphx.pro...ead=1184&page=1 I bought a small single stage one from Harbor Freight. Be sure to get the warranty. It worked just fine on my new vacuum/pressure chamber. Here is a link to a vacuum chamber I just built.

I drive a 93 S10 that has over 283,000 miles on it. It has a 2.8 V6 that has never been rebuilt and a 5 speed.

I was heating the mold until Jeff of Time Machine Resin had me call him to give me some help. The resin heats up on it's own. The only reason that the manufacturer wants you to do this is to burn up your mold faster and buy more silicone. Polishing your master is a must too. The best polish I have found is no longer made. Bare Metal Foil Plastic polish was made for clear parts and works extremely well. I bought up all I could find! It works great on paint too! I talked to the Inventor of BMF a few years ago when I called about the product being no longer offered.

Hi Danny, Are you still trying the clear? Try mixing it 1to 1 by volume instead of by weight. I do resin casting. I made the parts that John Teresi has been building. I have been getting better at using the clear resin. I recently discovered that the clear resin I bought from Alumilite and Aeromarine products are the same brand. Alumilite says to mix it by weight and Aeromarine says to mix it by volume. I am a bit confused by this mixed information. I have better luck mixing it by volume. I pour out of smaller containers that are lab grade bottles. Make certain it is mixed very well. Make a good two part mold. Pressure cast it and do not open for at least three days. Making the bubble tops for the Cosma Ray that John built is easy to do now that I have learned not to touch it for awhile. I have a forum that I post a lot of my resin work on. Email me if you still need help. Greg

If you are still looking for this please PM me, I can help you out. Greg