peteski

You know, we never landed on the Moon - it was all faked. There is a book about it.

Nice collection Scott! If you can produce your own decal artwork, there are decal companies (usually 1-man shops) that can print them for you with white ink (on Alps printers). well, then can do the artwork for you too, but that gets really expensive (because it is time-consuming task). But just printing your print-ready artwork is quite affordable. Here is a link to a page which lists those custom decal manufacturers (scroll down to the Custom decal companies section): http://robdebie.home.xs4all.nl/models/decals.htm As far as the artwork requirements go, here is an excerpt from http://www.fireballmodels.info/ No, please do not send me any bitmap artwork. I won't print it. Artwork should be in Vector format for best print results. Color Matching is an art with Alps printers, not a science. For the most part, precise color matching is not possible. Convert all type to curves in the final file that you want printed. This ensures your fonts will not cause problems. Use a neutral-colored background so that the White portions will stand out clearly. The templates have a neutral blue background.

Did you also count the time it takes you to make a batch of your foil? Time is money. Or you could spend it on something less mundane than making your own adhesive foil.

For burgers it is In-n-Out burger is the best (when I am in California, which is not often). Chick-Fil-A is pretty good, but for chicken nuggets the best place is the "Chicken Shack" - little shop 4 miles from my house. They make the nuggets fresh, right in the back of the place. They are really juicy and tender, and the breading is very tasty.

The only WC experience I have on my area (New England) is 6-packs of frozen sliders in the supermarket frozen foods isle. I find them pretty tasty (including the onions) but I'm sure the fresh ones are much better.

And that is why I stated "The shape is very familiar, but obviously it is not that car."

Isn't this stuff already being discussed in http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/topic/115370-this-could-provide-a-more-durable-chrome-finish-than-alclad/ ?

Ordering directly from BMF is not an potion for you? Shipping is too costly? Maybe buy few sheets and keep them in the fridge until you need them?

Hove you tried Micro-Sol from Microscale or Walthers Solva-set? Those are aggressive decal setting solutions (Walthers is the strongest). They should soften the decal film so you can scrape it off. But they are strong enough to leave marks on the paint too. I would take a piece of toilet paper and cut it to a shape little larger than the decal, place it over the decal and soak it with the solution. Make sure that the wet paper is in full contact with the decal. Wait 10-15 minutes (keep the paper moist) and then see if you can scrape the decal off.

The Tamiya liquid cement I have (don't remember which one) is acetone-based and WeldOn I have is methylene chloride. Both are very fast (methylene chloride is the fastest). My Testors Liquid Cement is MEK-based and it is much slower evaporating that the other 2 I mentioned. That is the slowest liquid cement I have encountered. There are also some non-toxic liquid cement (they use some sort of citrus oils). They have much slower evaporating time but I would stay away from them because they never really fully evaporate. Especially when large areas are glued. Even after few months you can see some distortion on the styrene develop from where the cement was applied.

But those Romans were really, really flatulent! And we all know that methane contributes to global warming.

Epoxy (the 5-minute type) will also give a good bond.

Nice! That does look like a major pain in the butt kind of a job.

Yes, Joseph is a class act. Very good products, and Joseph is a pleasure to deal with.

We have some people at work with their cubes configured for working in a standing position. Do you think it would help to have a high workbench and work on your models in a standing position? Would that help with the pain?

Acetone will craze/etch plastic. It worked on on "chromed" parts because the metallic layer acts like a barrier protecting the plastic underneath it. For tinting styrene windows I use Tamiya Acrylic pints (the ones in small glass jars). The have several transparent colors. Just don't thin it with lacquer thinner - use Tamiya thinner or Isopropyl alcohol.

I can even do better - I own an Alps MicroDry printer. But it would be much easier to just put the dry transfer on clear decal sheet. I could still scan them first just to have a backup copy, but since the visible side of the dry transfer decals is against the semi-transparent backing film, the scan will not be very usable without some extra cleanup work. Still, taking a scan is a good precaution. Thanks.

Put the candle back!!! Hump? What hump? Nice knockers! Why, thank you doctor! Mongo just pawn in the game of life. Laurel and a hardy welcome . . .

Nice find (for the Brexited folks). But remember that Polish with an uppercase P refers to a country (which I came from), not the stuff which makes things shiny.

Thanks for the info Greg. What brand or type of acrylic lacquer? Just out of curiosity, if you have small pane of (clean) glass or small mirror handy, could you place them down flat on a table and put few drops of water on them and let it evaporate naturally. Do you see spots or rings left on the glass or mirror? If yes then it sounds like your town water has lots of minerals dissolved in it. If you used distilled water it should leave no spots behind. You can buy distilled water in gallon size in pharmacies or in many grocery stores (supermarkets).

Mine has try transfer markings. I can't see myself trying to rub them onto the tubular frames! I might apply them to clear decal paper then apply them to the bike as decals.

If you revert back aren't you where you just were, not where you want to revert to? This one is one of my peeves.

Emoticons (or now we also have emojis - thank Japanese culture for this really cutesy stuff) have been around for a long time. The above Wiki link has a good explanation as to why they are used: As social media has become widespread, emoticons have played a significant role in communication through technology, and some devices have provided stylized pictures that do not use punctuation. They offer another range of "tone" and feeling through texting that portrays specific emotions through facial gestures while in the midst of text-based cyber communication. I also think of emoticons as shortcuts. While you could convey your thoughts purely through words, using emoticons is much easier and faster. As for the current use you can thank early computer geeks for them. The original emoticons go way back to the days of dial-up bulletin boards where they were written the old-fashioned way using ASCII characters like :-) . Of course as computers got more powerful, cutesy graphics replaced the ASCII text emoticons. That's progress for you. Even if you dislike those smiley things, I highly recommend that you read the Wikipedia entry I linked to at the beginning of my reply: you might just learn some very interesting things. But as with everything else, there are serious emoticon abusers out there: those who end each sentence with an emoticon, or those who just spew lines full of them across the message like this: Like it or not, this is the new way of computer-text-based conversations. You don't have to like them or use them.

I have also seen Michael Smith's work in the past. I recognized his work right away. But what to me gives it away is the chain-link fence. It doesn't look like real chin-link pattern but more like veil material. chain-link has square openings where this stuff is more like a parallelogram.

Super-realistic build. Very impressive! I have one of those Protar 1:9 bicycle kits (different than yours) in my stash and I am also planning on redoing the spokes. BTW, were the markings dry transfers instead of the usual waterslide decals? If yes, how difficult were they to apply?