peteski

While I'm sure there is a lot of industrial spying and copycatting happening in the automotive industry, I'm pretty sure that some of the similar designs happen independently, just following the general design trends of the time. Also, some of the similarities shown here, are in the eye of the beholder. Yes, they are similar, but IMO not close enough to be considered as a copycat designs,

Shapeways keeps changing the names of their materials, but I do believe that "White Natural Versatile Plastic" is in fact Nylon. The prints are very porous and paint/glues will not adhere very well to Nylon. More workable are resins like "Ultra Detail" and "Extreme Detail" (used to be called FUD and FXD).

LOL, the only shortage is the funds for gasoline.

In the paints world, reducer is another name for thinner. It reduces (thins) the paint to make it less viscous. I have never heard term "leveler" but I suppose it is also some sort of substance to make paint less viscous (thinner or more runny) to help it in leveling out on the painted surface. Could just be yet another name for thinner.

Ok, thanks. Looks like solid copper wire to me. Electrical wire is almost exclusively copper (and rarely aluminum, which would look silver). Going by the colors, that stuff looks like wire used inside fluorescent lamp fixtures.

I think the clear smoke on the outside (clear red on the inside) should give the desired effect, but I also recommend testing it on a piece of clear plastic. However even if you did the test on the actual lens and it didn't work well, those paints can be easily removed with Isopropyl alcohol).

I used it on this replay and it seems to work (on my desktop PC).

I don't have any experience stripping that specific paint. If Super Clean doesn't work (even warmed up), then I would move onto other strippers. Next up for me would be Scalecoat Wash Away paint remover, or Testors ELO (used to be called Floquil Easy Lift Off) paint remover. ELO contains an ingredient from the same chemical family as DOT3 brake fluid. Do not immerse your model in those strippers - follow directions on the bottle. Also, have you tried 91% (or even better, 99%) Isopropyl alcohol? Again, it works the best when slightly warm.

Those actually look better than I would have expected. The coils look even and the tapered areas look good. What type of wire are you using? Going by the boxart, those springs could even be made from thinner wire.

Clever idea, but it is shown on bare plastic. If the model has faint scripts, paint will bury them, making the technique pretty much impossible. In those cases foiling the script before painting is probably a better option.

If there us a cat in your household, you will likely find whiskers it sheds. Those can make good antennas as they have a taper similar to the taper of some of the antennas (sewing needles don't look quite right to me). Trim the thinnest end of the whisker, paint it silver and install it in the fender. Job done! And a whisker is also flexible like a real antenna).

Mike, there are multiple types of paints and multiple types of paint steppers. Certain combinations of paint and strippers work well, others do not. As I said earlier, even the temperature of the stripper can affect its potency. There is no list of which stripper works the best with which paints. At least no list I know of. I don't even have my own list compiled. I have and use about half a dozen of various stripping liquids. it is not an exact science, but more like an experiment. You mentioned "enamel", but no specifics. What brand of paint is it? Maybe someone can offer some specific advice once we know more about the paint. As for the paint age, sure it can be harder to strip decades old paint, but usually there are ways to strip even old paint. However there seem to be some paints or primers out there which are very difficult to strip.

None of the online forums I participate in allow for deleting posts. You can edit a post, but not delete it. One way of dealing with it is to delete the contents of the post and replace it with the word "deleted". I've seen that done here. But by posting to an old thread you brought it back to the the top of the topics list for everybody to see. That can't be undone.

Contac "paper" is a vinyl film which shrinks slightly after few years. Don't ask how I know.

The taper is probably just a draft angle so the wheel can be easily ejected from the steel mold.

Some people (like me) likely stay logged in onto the forum on their computers (or phones) continuously (even as I sleep). Would that show them as "online"? If not, how is the online status determined?

Off the top of my head, several reasons (at least for me). The biggest one is drying time. I'm a CA glue junkie (instant setting). Also, silicone is soft and rubbery. That flexibility of all the model's part joints is not something I want in my model. Another thing is that it is messy. Even in small amounts, it will likely ooze from the joint, requiring a cleanup. I don't want to double my build time doing glue cleanup. The next one is related: this stuff is too thick. Some parts need to be assemble in a way that parts touch each other. Also the bond between bare plastic and silicone is not very strong (especially if there is only very thin layer of silicone). When I build my models, they are not designed to be taken apart.

Unless you placed several bids in one dollar increments to arrive at that $12 then you misunderstood what Ace mentioned. Those "nickel and dimers" as I call them, bid in one dollar increments trying to outbid a higher bid placed earlier by someone, and ebay is doing the automatic proxy bidding for that earlier bidder, outbidding the "nickel and dimer". You have to understand how eBay's automatic proxy bidding works for this to make sense to you. Maybe people do not understand thst eBay does the bidding automatically for the earlier bidder who placed a large bid earlier, but the high bid amount that shows is only the minimum of the bid increment above the lower bid. It is actually simpler than my poor explanation. Then there are bidders who bid some high amount early on, then "cement" that bid towards the end of the auction by placing even larger bid. If that bidder wins the auction you will see two bids for the same amount placed by the same bidder, but showing different day/time of the bid. There is a whole science to understanding various bidding tricks. My method is simple: I snipe. Doesn't guarantee that I win, but it minimizes the bid creep. What you did I considered a "lucky break". You were the lone bidder and got the item for the starting price. I see lots of bidders who bid the starting price bid, but most of the time they are outbid. You got lucky that nobody else wanted the item.

Here is my speculation: Those "chrome like" paints have thin flat shiny metallic particles (flakes) suspended in the liquid, which consists of the solvent which evaporates, and binder which is the clear resin which remains after the paint is dry, and which also encapsulates the metallic particles. When in liquid form those flat metallic particles are free to rotate in all direction scattering light, appearing like swirling shimmering silver paint. Once sprayed onto the surface, when the solvent has not yet evaporated, those silver particles settled down in the liquid, aligning themselves flat on the painted surface. They stay that way until the solvent evaporates and the binder (clear resin) hardens protecting the silver particles), so they stay aligned That creates the "chrome like" appearance. I suspect that the airflow from a fan nearby keeps swirling the liquid (and the metallic particles) preventing them from settling down flat as the solvent evaporates. Since they metallic particles can't align as the paint dries, they will just look like silver paint (since they scatter, not reflect the light like a mirror).

The actual metal conductor in 30AWG wire has a diameter of 0.010". Insulation in a wire-wrapping type wire has outer diameter of around 0.016". You can figure out the actual 1:1 diameters by multiplying those dimensions by either 24 or 25 (depending on the scale of your model).

If you could remove the center core wire then it would be much more flexible. Not sure if that is possible though.

Looks like we both missed it! Thanks for the info Tomasz.

That's exactly what I was going to say and ask. Bombowy model!! It must have taken very long time to build. The amount of very fine detail seems to imply that it is a large scale model, but if it is 1:24 I'll be totally speechless. I have a feeling that if you were to photograph this model against natural background it would be impossible to tell it from the 1:1 scale car.

That's pretty clever Rob. But I'm curious how long did it take you to physically align the models perfectly. How many tries? Or did you do the aligning in your image editing program? I also assume you used a tripod mounted camera.

If the ID (Inside Diameter) of the tubing is 0.0215" then any wire smaller than 0.0215" in diameter should slide into the tubing. Greg proposed 0.020" wire - that'll work. But that size seems a touch thick for a 1:25 model car (assuming that is what you have). The 0.028" tubing in 1:25 scale comes out to 0.028 X 25 = 0.7" in 1:1 scale 0.7" would be but thick for an antenna. I have used this technique for making antennas, but I used thinner hypodermic tubing, and thinner stainless steel wire for the top segment. Here is a 3-piece antenna made this way. This is on 1:32 scale car. I don't recall what size tubing I used. I would have to dig that car out of storage and measure it. I'm pretty sure though that the top segment wire is 0.005". I used to buy my tubing from Small Parts Inc., but amazon assimilated them some years ago, and finding anything on amazon website stinks. I did find another company which sells similar range of tubing, and has an easy to deal with website. https://componentsupplycompany.com/