What New (Modeling) Technique Did You Try Today?

[Snake45]

I thought it might be fun and/or informative to discuss trying new modeling techniques--either something new you've invented, or a technique or procedure you've learned about here or elsewhere but never tried yourself before now. I tried something new yesterday. 

I enjoy polishing the molded plastic of a kit body, if it's a nice color and pretty opaque looking (i.e., not too "plastic-y"). It's a challenge to make polished plastic look as good as paint, and if it doesn't work out, you can always go ahead and paint the thing as normal. I've had some very good results, and a couple of spectacular ones. 

One of the hardest colors to pull off in polished plastic is white. I've successfully done two so far (AMT '53 and '59 Corvettes), but much if not most white kit styrene isn't especially opaque, and has sort of a "skim milk" look to it. I'm currently working on a rebuilder '65 Galaxie that has a bit of this--not as bad as some, but the finish/color has a slight bit of a "pearl"-ish look to it I find kind of attractive. Test-polishing a few areas, I discovered that this plastic will shine up quite nicely, but I was wondering if I could make the white a bit more "solid" looking. 

Decided to test something on the hood and (separate) trunk lid. I block-sanded both with a fingernail trim stick to eliminate the mild mold sinkage from the understructure, then polished both out. Then I masked off the top surfaces, and shot the undersides with two coats of white primer. 

The hood and trunk now look a bit whiter, brighter, and more "solid" than the rest of the body.  I was surprised to find that my finger would still "shadow" through the plastic if held up to the light, but not quite as much as the unmodified body. In normal reflected light (i.e, falling on the outside, not coming from the inside), I can see my finger very slightly through the unmodified body, but not through the back-primed hood and trunk. I think it's making a difference. I think I'll shoot a couple more coats of white on the hood and trunk, and maybe four coats on the inside of the body. I'll post the results. (At this point, the improvement is SO subtle that I'm sure it won't show up in pictures.) 

I'm interested in trying this trick on other colors, too, such as an orange AMT '70 Challenger body I have around. Will let you know how it works. 

So, have you tried something new for the first time recently? How did it work for you? Tell us about it! 

[NOBLNG]

Upholstery! I am trying to replicate the seat in my Willys, which is actually the rear seat from a 1980 Blazer. I narrowed the seat from a ‘56 Ford pickup. Then I added some piping (not quite correct, but pretty much out of sight). Then I found a picture of similar colour houndstooth pattern on the internet, re-sized and printed it. The last pic is some self adhesive label paper that doesn’t stick well enough. I’ve re-printed it on normal paper and am experimenting with different glues to fasten it securely. Then I will give the whole thing a coat of satin clear. 

[slusher]

that’s really nice, Greg..

[TransAmMike]

Well thats certainly worth trying.🤔

[cobraman]

Greg, that does look great ! Snake, did you ever finish polishing out that green bodied cobra ?

[Snake45]

50 minutes ago, cobraman said:

Snake, did you ever finish polishing out that green bodied cobra ?

I sure did. Finished it last week. Will get it written up and pics posted soon. 

[Deuces ll]

Nice!....🙂👍

[NOBLNG]

I downsized the pattern a little more and glued it on with epoxy after coating the backside with clear laquer so the glue wouldn’t soak through. Then a coat of flat acrylic.

[Tom Geiger]

Greg, I printed this pattern on regular bond paper and glued it down with white glue. I was careful with the amount of glue used, and didn’t treat the paper with anything. I didn’t have any bleed through. 

I found thousands of fabric patterns on the Joanne’s Fabrics website. I was able to save this pattern and get several rows of the pattern assembled tight in Word to get a large enough piece. Then it was a matter of printing it in different sizes until it appeared to be scale.

I used this Evergreen brand Canopy Cement, a white glue they sell at Hobby Lobby

[ksnow]

I tried sanding/polishing the black paint job on a supernatural Impala. Started with the hood, this is the first time I've tried it. There was a fair amount of orange peel in the paint. I got the hood smoothed out, but did sand through the paint on the ridges.

For the body, I decided against sanding and tried some plastic polish. It worked quite nice. the paint job looks a lot better, though there is still orange peel present. The polish does remove some paint, there is black on the cloth that I am using. But I have yet to go through the paint. There are 2 light coats and 3 wet coats of rattle can on the body, over grey primer.

Here's the plastic polish:

 

[Chariots of Fire]

I recently made some seat covers on the Reo project I was doing.  The seat came from a Chevy p/u and had to be narrowed up some to fit in the cab.  I sprayed the seats primer gray and then made an alternating blue striped decal leaving a clear space between the blue stripes.  The entire seat was then sprayed with Dullcote.  And a similar thing was done for this 1953 Ford Victoria hardtop.

[Snake45]

On 4/17/2021 at 4:17 PM, Snake45 said:

I enjoy polishing the molded plastic of a kit body, if it's a nice color and pretty opaque looking (i.e., not too "plastic-y"). It's a challenge to make polished plastic look as good as paint, and if it doesn't work out, you can always go ahead and paint the thing as normal. I've had some very good results, and a couple of spectacular ones. 

One of the hardest colors to pull off in polished plastic is white. I've successfully done two so far (AMT '53 and '59 Corvettes), but much if not most white kit styrene isn't especially opaque, and has sort of a "skim milk" look to it. I'm currently working on a rebuilder '65 Galaxie that has a bit of this--not as bad as some, but the finish/color has a slight bit of a "pearl"-ish look to it I find kind of attractive. Test-polishing a few areas, I discovered that this plastic will shine up quite nicely, but I was wondering if I could make the white a bit more "solid" looking. 

Decided to test something on the hood and (separate) trunk lid. I block-sanded both with a fingernail trim stick to eliminate the mild mold sinkage from the understructure, then polished both out. Then I masked off the top surfaces, and shot the undersides with two coats of white primer. 

The hood and trunk now look a bit whiter, brighter, and more "solid" than the rest of the body.  I was surprised to find that my finger would still "shadow" through the plastic if held up to the light, but not quite as much as the unmodified body. In normal reflected light (i.e, falling on the outside, not coming from the inside), I can see my finger very slightly through the unmodified body, but not through the back-primed hood and trunk. I think it's making a difference. I think I'll shoot a couple more coats of white on the hood and trunk, and maybe four coats on the inside of the body. I'll post the results. (At this point, the improvement is SO subtle that I'm sure it won't show up in pictures.) 

Finished the Galaxie rescue. I ended up with four coats of the white primer on the insides of the hood, trunk lid, and main body. Not sure how well it'll show up in pics but I can see it in 3D--it doesn't look like nice white paint, of course, but the difference is about like the difference between skim and whole milk, if that makes sense. The color is just a bit more "solid" than it was. 

Before and After pics: 

[StevenGuthmiller]

Something simple, but I decided to try splattering a little clear from a distance over my flat black Hemi valve covers to try to give them a little bit of that "speckled" or "wrinkle" finish.

Doesn't look too bad, but I might try to add one more thin coat of flat now and give them the old "finger rub" treatment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Steve

[Mattilacken]

I learn so many tricks and techniques here al the time but I tried one today, instead of putty I used CA glue and sanded it to fill some gaps. Worked great!

[NOBLNG]

45 minutes ago, StevenGuthmiller said:

Something simple, but I decided to try splattering a little clear from a distance over my flat black Hemi valve covers to try to give them a little bit of that "speckled" or "wrinkle" finish.

Doesn't look too bad, but I might try to add one more thin coat of flat now and give them the old "finger rub" treatment.

Steve

 

Where’s the orange peel when you want it eh?

[StevenGuthmiller]

6 minutes ago, NOBLNG said:

Where’s the orange peel when you want it eh?

😁

This is a little like the technique I use for vinyl tops, but in this circumstance, a little more for the variation in sheen rather than texture.

 

 

Steve

[CabDriver]

Tried applying flocking with Arleene’s Tacky Glue instead of the Elmer’s that I normally use.  Arleene’s seems to be a lot stickier so I figured it would work better - and it did!

Nice even coverage and no patchy bits like I always seemed to get when using paint or Elmer’s.  Will definitely do it this way in future!