peteski

Be careful when using steel BBs in water-based paints. They will rust, ruining the paint. Even some type of stainless steel will rust in certain paint formulas. I use glass beads used for jewelry making from an arts/crafts store (roughly the same size as BBs). BTW, if you ever opened an empty spray paint can, those rattling things inside are actually glass marbles.

That happened a while ago (in 2103) - if you read through The Complete Future it is all mentioned in there.

That's weird. Sounds like a new case of the dreaded Zinc Past! I thought that problem was gone decades ago. Here is a good explanation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinc_pest I guess with all those the products coming from China the quality control and the purity of metals used can be questionable. After all, these are just toys.

I often shoot mild (not hot) paints over bare plastic. That minimizes the overall paint thickness (which makes for a better model). But that only works with paints made for plastic models (like Testors, Tamiya, etc.)

The name. Seriously, going by smell and the finish, they seem identical, except for the bottle they are in. I'm assuming that you are asking about the enable paints (not water-based acrylics). I usually stay away from them as they never seem to fully dry, and their bright and shiny finish dulls really easily when handled.

I use a very similar technique to Pete's (the white glue is used to stabilize the emblem while sanding) except I don't used BMF (too thin and fragile). I use regular kitchen aluminum foil. Remember to always make few extras (in case one is lost or broken during handling). Don't ask how I know...

What air pressure are you using and how far from the model's surface are you spraying? Since you are willing to play (practice on plastic spoons), lower the air pressure, increase the paint flow and move the airbrush closer to the surface.

Strong lighting is vital for miniature model work. I often work on 1:43 or even 1:160 scale models. On my workbench I use 2 sunnex gooseneck 20W halogen lights and 2 magnifier lamps with 3000K "Kitchens and Bathrooms" GE fluorescent bulbs which have CRI of 85 (pretty decent CRI for fluorescent lamps). The halogen lights also have an excellent CRI value. The halogen lamps have very small heads so I can position them very close to my face and to the work area to focus the intense light exactly where I need it. The Sunnex lamps aren't cheap, but they are well worth their price. I bought mine about 150 years ago. I just checked their website and nowadays they offer a whole range of LED-based lamps. Still, I like the halogen ones for their high CRI.

I'm glad you got this thing figured out and thanks for the follow up. It is always good to know the final solution.

Buick? Where? I don't see any Buicks in those photos. That car looks very nice, but the name has to go! It sounds like some blood-pressure or diabetes drug.

Funny, I just picked up a model of it few weeks ago!

LOL! They are nice! Some not as well proportioned as original Matchbox ones, but they have nice paint jobs and most have operating features.

Funny - Couple of years ago I saw one of those in what looked like original unrestored (but good) condition at a local supermarket parking lot (used as a grocery getter). Talking about unique cars!

Vegas, Ace Ventura and Mr. T? I pity the fool!

Replicas and Miniatures (Norm) used to sell photoetched nickel-silver egg crate pattern. Check the catalog. I bought one for my T-Bird model (which is now buried deep in my stash, and the photoetch is packed in the kit's box.

Oh yes it can - and it will. No matter which party gets in. Trust me on that one.

I'm also not sure about this aversion to nail polish. Nail polish is simply a solvent-based lacquer. Similar to to the automotive touch-up paints you buy in a car parts store or at a car dealer. It is also similar to several brands of model paints (like Scale Finishes). If you think about it, paint/lacquer is manufactured in large quantities and then it is poured into small bottles (like hobby paints or nail polishes). If I were to take some orange nail polish, thin it a bit with lacquer thinner and pour it in a Scale Finishes bottle with their label, you would use it and never know that the paint came from a nail polish bottle.

I'm not sure that I would want to see some of the Spotlight forum members here. I have Comcast as my ISP at home and I have not problems accessing that other board. Can't you take one of your wireless devices to some random WiFi hotspot in your town and see if the problem still happens on those networks? Or can you try shutting off the WiFi on your phone and trying to access it through your phone carrier's network?

Bill, I think some of this diluting of those American value was due to the fact that there was a major change in the global economy. The world has become a much smaller place and less isolated than it was let's say 40 years ago. Instead of doing everything in-house (and keeping the know how within the company and within the country), large companies have expanded into many different locations all over the world. The R&D is no longer just kept in USA. They can do it cheaper in other countries. Which brings up another point: the bottom line. Now it seems that more than ever before (at least in my lifetime) all that the corporations seem to care about is maximizing their profit and pay off the shareholders. Plus all the mega-mergers where there are fewer and fewer companies competing with each other is also stiffing innovation. That is how I see it and there doesn't seem to be any way to reverse these trends. The other thing is that the population is getting lazier when it comes to logical thinking. With the Internet and easy and instant access to the entire knowledge of the world, nobody needs to think anymore - we just "Google it". The technology makes us not want to think - especially those who don't remember days before the Internet or a smart phone. Why learn cursive writing or arithmetical operation in your head when the computing devices which are ever-present in our lives can do all of that for us. Like I said: I don't see a good way to get things back to the good-old-days. The cat (the tightly interconnected global economy) is out of the bag and we can't turn back. But as a naturalized immigrant I can tell you that while I can see lots of negative changes have taken place since I arrived in the good US of A, we still are much better off than many other places on this blue planet of ours.

Whatever it is - it's very cute!

From that picture it looks like Pale Gold would be a good match, but I have that Alclad paint and I don't think it is as intensely yellow as the photo above shows. The Inca Gold looks like even better match. Problem with the Testors paints is that the metallic particles in them are rather large and they look like metal flake paint instead of metallic finish. You might want to browse the fingernail polish section of your local grocery store or drug store - you might find something that works.

When I was growing up in Poland in the 70s we mostly had Matchbox models (and of course the various models from the Eastern Bloc countries). I did encounter few Hot Wheels cars but they always looked odd to me. Now as an adult I can clearly see that most (but not all) Matchbox cars of that era were nicely-proportioned scale models of real vehicles, where Hot Wheels were more of a whimsical fantasy automobiles rather than scale models of the real vehicles. When I emigrated from Poland I sold all my diecast cars. But I have since then rebuilt some of my collection and even added models which attracted me as an adult. I like to mention that Tomy diecast cars also depict rather well-proportioned scale replicas of real vehicles. I also have several Tomy models in my collection. I addition, I have several Matchbox Super Kings which are mostly diecast models of larger trucks which are close in scale to the standard Matchbox passenger vehicles. Most of those are fantasy vehicles (they look very futuristic), but there are few (like the gasoline tankers) which look like real trucks.

It's a Buick - do I have to say anything else?

Is that a front-engined Beetle?

I used 0.010" styrene painted satin black. Looks like a rubber mud flap. To keep this in perspective, a 1:1 rubber flap us probably around 1/4" thick. That works out exactly to 0.010" in 1:25 scale! If you make them thicker then they won't look right. I also has some black rubbery material of about that same thickness (anti-static bag for electronic parts). I made mud flaps out of it but it didn't hang straight down. While it was nice and floppy, it didn't look realistic. The 0.010" styrene looked most realistic.