Snake45

Pat, what's the maroon paint on that Magnum? It's a nice color.

Was just googling and came across this. Never heard of it before. Worth a try, maybe: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/say-goodbye-to-old-yellowed-plastics

I haven't either, but then I don't think I've ever seen injection-molded clear plastic go yellow. Had to ask. Yellowing of some types of clear vac-plastic is a well-known phenomenon in Model Airplane World. Many have tried many things, but so far no one's found a cure.

Is the clear plastic injection-molded or vacuum-formed?

I used The Treatment for a while 20 or 30 years ago, and I run across the nearly-full tub every now and then. I found that, for me, its disadvantages outweighed its advantages. I get along quite nicely without it these days.

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

I've recently bought two glue bombs (at the local toy shows) just for the wheels and tires on them, and consider the money well spent. And bought a third that I am currently "rescuing" mainly because it had great wheels and tires on it already, so wouldn't have to worry about scrounging any up for it. The rescue currently on the bench, just before disassembly:

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!

Different and therefore interesting! Kinda cool, in fact! Well done and model on!

Regardless of all the problems, you wrestled it to the ground! VERY well done and model on!

VERY nice! Might be your best build yet--and almost certainly my favorite of yours. Well done and model on!

Very nice! Not perfect, but very nice, and that's coming from someone who drove a '65 Special in high school and often wishes he had it back. I couldn't have built this model, and you did, so, you win! Well done and model on!

Okay, I'm tagging in with this '70 Vette promo. Dunno how long ago I bought it off eBay, but it was several years, and I know I haven't worked on it since 2019 at least. Got it super-cheap (maybe $5? I don't remember) because there was a huge crack/break in the hood (molded into the body). I've fixed lots of cracks like this before and I thought No Sweat. Just finagle it back into place and hit it with some hot liquid cement, right? Of course it didn't work out that way. It dried out of place, with about a .002" or so "step" where it should have been smooth. And of course the plan was to polish the gorgeous metallic blue plastic, not paint it, so it had to be perfect. So I'd sand and polish it for a couple evenings, and it wouldn't look good enough, and I'd put it aside for a few months, and then try again, and it still wasn't good enough. So the other day I realized I was tired of looking at the thing sitting on the work table in my man-cave/TV room, and took another look at it, and maybe my standards have lowered a little or something, but it didn't look as bad as I remembered. So I just spent a couple minutes going at it with some Trim nail sticks and it looks workable. So I'm gonna try to GITTER DONE. You can just see the crack in the forward right part of the hood, ahead of the bulge, in the pic below. (The crack didn't show up at all in two other pics from a similar angle.) The dust on the trunk in the rear-angle pic will attest to how long it's been sitting. As you can see, nothing else has been done to the thing at this point beyond the work trying to heal the crack. Should I paint the interior black, or tan?

Every paint is a law unto itself. Some paints will exhibit lots of change in the test you did; others will hardly change at all. You did the right thing by testing. If you have an airbrush and want the paint bluer than it is now, then by all means add some blue to the paint and airbrush away!

HAHAHAHAHHA! I've never yet seen a kit I couldn't find at least one headache in.

Agreed--that's just Hella Cool! I'd LOVE to find some kind of curbside kit (hood in place) molded that way.

Huh. Was it still included in the kit, but just not used with the GG body panels? I don't remember scratchbuilding a roll bar for mine, but maybe I did. I'll have to dig it out and see if I can figure it out.

NZAnglia, looks fabulous! FIRST COMPLETION GOTTER DONE! Daddy209, also looks fabulous! SECOND COMPLETION GOTTER DONE! Anglia, If you haven't worked on the Camarobot in 2 years, then it's eligible, provided no active participant objects. We allowed an airplane in Round 3 (it didn't get finished). I've got a couple airplanes on the SOD myself I might try to slide in at some point, if I ever get motivated to work on them again. Two completions, a new entrant, and a new page, an update is definitely called for: ROUND 11: FINISH DATE JUNE 30, 2021 Misha: Chopped T coupe Altered Ksnow: '77 Camaro Nzanglia: '65 Mustang modified FIRST COMPLETION GOTTER DONE! Whosurdaddy209: 1/12 '67 Vette SECOND COMPLETION! GOTTER DONE! #1 Model Citizen: '56 Chrysler Tom Geiger: '53 Studebaker Gullwing Tim J: Ferrari Testarossa Pat Minarick: Dodge Magnum I'll have my own declaration up as soon as I can find the thing and shoot a couple pics.

We can't wait to see your fixes.

I always scribe my door/trunk lines about 2/3 of the way through the plastic, then flow flat black paint in there. And then I prime, paint, and polish normally and don't do another thing to the panel lines until I wash the final polish out of them with a toothbrush and warm running water. I'm very happy with the results I get with this method.

These sound like good ideas.

Uh, some kind of robot?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

You're in! And you're Number 8, which means we're officially on. Welcome aboard! I expect to declare soon with a '66 Impala promo, but I don't have pics of it as-is yet. ROUND 11: FINISH DATE JUNE 30, 2021 Misha: Chopped T coupe Altered Ksnow: '77 Camaro Nzanglia: '65 Mustang modified MAKING GREAT PROGRESS! Whosurdaddy209: 1/12 '67 Vette #1 Model Citizen: '56 Chrysler Tom Geiger: '53 Studebaker Gullwing Tim J: Ferrari Testarossa Pat Minarick: Dodge Magnum

Pick one, tell us when you started it and when you last worked on it (before your recent activity), declare yourself in, and you're in. Completion date for this round is June 30.