flashman1957

If you have a 3D resin printer, or know someone that does and might be willing to print them for you, or decide to use a commercial printer service that does 3D resin (there may even be 3D printing companies in your local area), there is a 3D printing file available for sale on the Cults3D site to be able to print replacement tires (tyres 😉) for that kit. The 3D file is named "McLaren M8B Tyre Set for Accurate Miniatures 1:24". The file seller's name is AVUS3D, and the price of the file is $2.18 USD (as of the current exchange rate). These tires are supposedly more accurate (no pun intended) than the kit tires. The URL/link is: https://cults3d.com/en/3d-model/various/mclaren-m8b-tyre-set-for-accurate-miniatures-1-24-avus3d At that price, it could be worth buying that 3D file to have on hand even if you currently don't have a way to print it yet. It does not cost anything to create a Cults3D account for yourself to be able to buy/download files from that site. That way you would have the files available when you start looking for a way to have them printed. Just FYI, when you do get them printed, I'd recommend requesting at least a couple sets or more, just in case you run into any problems trying to use them. For example, just last week a friend of mine started to use his Dremel to enlarge the opening of a set of 3D printed tires for a different kit that another friend had printed for him, and one of the tires shattered, as some brands or types of 3D resins on the market may be more brittle than some other brands/types, or affected by how they were printed. Good luck!

Like Ace, I often use pieces cut from straight sewing pins because it is so strong (won't easily get broken off accidentally). But I've had problems when the glue used doesn't grip the smooth pin well enough, and then the pinned part just rotates in the hole in the body or other location. So I just wanted to add NOBLNG's killer tip to help prevent that from happening: Cameron

FWIW, a good friend of mine who has been using Mr.Color Leveling Thinner (MLT) for past several years now uses it to thin nearly all of the various types of hobby paints he uses including all brands of enamels (dries faster, smoother, and harder), lacquers, acrylic lacquers (Tamiya, Gunze's MrColor, MCW, etc), acrylics (Tamiya, AK, Vallejo, Gunze Aqueous, etc), and so on. The only type of hobby paint he says he's found MLT should NEVER be used in is Mission Models Paint acrylics, as any type of lacquer-based thinner will turn Mission Models Paint into an insoluble goo that is almost impossible to remove or clean off (he says Mission Models Paint is a great model paint, but it must only be used with their proprietary thinner and Poly additive, exactly following their mixing instructions). In fact, MrColor Leveling Thinner is becoming referred to as "God's tears" in our local modeling community (no sacrilege intended, just complimenting it! 😄)

That's what I needed. And thanks loads for the extra tips, and for sharing your build! I'm definitely saving this for when I build mine. Cameron

John, so what paint did you decide best matched the blue on the Indycals sheet? Forgive me but I couldn't find anywhere in the thread where you said what color and brand of blue paint you decided to go with. I also have this kit and have always really liked the look of Sneva's car, and the Indycals decals are on their way right now. When I saw your mention of "grabber blue", I used Google/Images, and from what I see that color appears correct for this car to me. So I will have to get it from Duplicolor or one of the model paint suppliers. Thanks, Cameron

Jon Bius has just posted a helpful video on his blog and YouTube channel covering Quick Shine as a replacement for Future/Pledge/etc. Worth checking out as he describes how it worked for him. Link to the video is included on his blog page. https://www.jonbius.com/2023/02/01/a-replacement-for-pledge-here-it-is/ It's also worth browsing about on his blog and YouTube channel as he covers a lot of modeling techniques and tutorials, not just Gundam and Warhammer subjects (although his more recent posts/videos are the Gundam type stuff, so look toward the older stuff for more general modeling subjects).

In case it's useful, a nice tutorial on using solder to make headers is found here: https://kitbashkorner.forumotion.com/t20-solder-headers-kitbash Cameron

Just a heads-up for those like me that prefer Apple Mac computers. The following magazine archive DVD's from Kalmbach DO NOT work on Macs using the MacOS 10.15 "Catalina" or newer version operating systems. The Kalmbach web pages for these DVD-ROMs do clearly state these two DVD's are not compatible with MacOS 10.15 Catalina or newer: Scale Auto: First 35 Years 1979-2013 DVD-ROM FineScale Modeler: 25-Year Collection 1982-2007 DVD-ROM But the following magazine archive DVD's DO work on MacOS 10.15 Catalina or newer operating systems: Scale Auto: 5-Year Collection 2014-2018 DVD-ROM FineScale Modeler: 10-Year Collection 2008-2017 DVD-ROM I found this out the hard way when my 10-year old iMac died a couple years ago, and I had to buy a new iMac that came with MacOS 10.15 Catalina pre-installed. Imagine my surprise when I was unable to install the SA: First 35 Years and FSM: 25-Year archives on the new computer. That was many years of magazines I no longer could access. To say I was p***ed is putting it mildly. ? At the NNL North model show this past May, FineScale Modeler was there to photograph models for the magazine, so I asked whether there was any chance that the incompatible DVD archives might get updated to work on newer Macs, since the second DVD volumes for both magazines did work. My thinking was that since they already had the necessary compatible programming created for the volume two DVD's, that it should be fairly easy to migrate the older magazine archives into the new compatible programming. But he explained that the software developer said they would charge Kalmbach nearly as much to upgrade the archives as the original DVD programming had cost, and that Kalmbach's management decided the programming cost was just too high for them to justify. Because I really wanted to be able to access the old magazine archives (and also still use some older apps that also do not work on 10.15 or later), I was lucky to find an inexpensively priced older iMac (but still newer model than my old one that had died) running MacOS 10.13 "High Sierra", and I am now able to run the magazine archives and other older apps on that Mac. But not everyone will be able to justify doing what I did because they love the Mac. But I considered it worth doing. Oh well... , the downsides of computer technology progress. Apple finally decided it was time to cut support for the old legacy 32-bit programming for it's OS and apps, and use all newer 64-bit programming beginning with 10.15 Catalina. But they gave years of advance warning that this was coming, and I still don't understand why the first two magazine archive DVDs were programmed using 32-bit only. Cameron

"Flow-Aid" by Liquitex is commonly used to combat tip-dry when airbrushing acrylic paints (that's what it's made for), and is usually available at most places that sell artist paint supplies, including Hobby Lobby. The below article gives good information on using it with various brands of modeling acrylics: https://modelpaintsol.com/guides/liquitex-flow-and-slow-the-tools-for-taming-acrylic-paints But be aware that not all brands of acrylics behave the same way, due to different formulations the manufacturers use, so remember to test it first. And while on the subject, the same website also has a great article on what airbrush cleaning solutions to use, which can vary a lot depending on the brand of paint. For example, several of my modeling friends found out the hard way that the lacquer thinner they have used for years to clean paints from their airbrushes, just turns some brands of acrylics to goo that can be difficult to remove! https://modelpaintsol.com/guides/airbrushing-tips-v4-airbrush-cleaners

You got it, Les. ? https://www.rocketfin.com/model_car_links.html Just be careful you have some time to kill, first. Once you start going thru the links, time flies by and hard for pull yourself away...