peteski

I do know what wraps are, but I just didn't understand the meaning of "lets call it dark rust orange." That description seemed odd to me. Like you didn't really want to describe what it looked like. Was the wrap a photo-realistic depiction of a rusty metal surface? Otherwise, what would be wrong with a dark rust orange colored vehicle? At least this is how my brain saw your comment. Seemed that you were giving a hint, and I just don't get it.

That's why I mentioned that the eBay thing should be just one of several sources of model desirability research. I was not suggesting looking for outrageously high selling prices, just the general volume of kit's eBay sales. The other methods mentioned earlier were getting feedback from show visitors, and of course online forums. But both of those are also very small sample of potential kit buyers out there. Manufacturer has to produce tens of thousands of kits to make some profit. The more data is available about potential sales, the better informed decision the manufacturer can make.

Not trying to be argumentative but I just read all Dave's posts in this thread and nowhere he asks for all types of forum strangeness to be reported here. Same in the "Forum now unusable — SOOO slow" (locked) thread where he pointed members here for reporting sluggish website behavior. Speaking of which (and bringing this thread back on topic), the forum has been quite sluggish for me this morning.

What I think would be helpful to estimate whether to reissue some older kits would be for them to monitor sold eBay listings of the original models. If they fetch high prices or show bidding wars, there is a good chance that a new run would sell well. Not to use that as a sole reason for reissue, but use those numbers along with other request they get for reissues to estimate whether a new run is justified.

Are you sure they were personal or private messages and not public messages? Both can be used for communicating between members, and public ones (as the name implies) are viewable by everybody. I accidentally sent a public message in the past without realizing ('til later) that it was public. Anyway, this should have been in a separate thread as it has nothing to do with the subject of this thread.

That must have gone way over my head as I have no idea what that means.

Centerless grinding.

Ah, perfect for those golf safaris, or when the ball slices off deep into the woods!

Neah. To me Rivians look like any other contemporary SUV or pickup. The only strange thing are those vertical Maxi-pad headlights. Cybertruck is much much stranger and uglier. I saw a black one and drove behind a stainless one recently. I don't know why anybody would want one. Well, just to be "different" I guess.

Tenax-7R and Ambroid Pro Weld are basically Methylene Chloride. You can get a quart size container of it on Amazon for less than cost of few tiny bottles of those no-longer available cements. I you still want small bottles, try Tack-it II plastic welder from https://www.jmhobbysupply.com/ It is also Methylene Chloride and comes in the same bottle that Tenax-7R did. My local hobby shop carries it in those 1oz. bottles for $5.99.

Unfortunately that is a real possibility. Spitefulness seems to be norm nowadays, since there seems not to be any repercussions or punishment for bad deeds.

That reminded me that back in the day companies making plastic parts used to reuse chopped up sprue material to mold some plastic items not usually visible (like internal parts or bottom covers of radios, electric clocks, etc.) . When the chopped up sprues had multiple colors, the molded parts had a marbled or swirled look them.

There is *THAT* much size difference between the stock kit part and the photoetched one?! Makes me wonder which is closer to the correct size. The plastic one doesn't look half bad.

I would speculate that it is a very good possibility. Model companies seem to do their share of using each other's products. Also keep in mind that mine is around 30 years old, while Ron's bottle shows copyright 2018 (is 6 years or less). I believe Ron's has a plastic tube applicator.

Ron, Model Master was a line of modeling products made by Testors. So when Rustoleum took Testors over, they also acquired the Model Master brand. So your Model Master branded bottle is likely the same stuff as the glue in Testors branded bottle, since it is produced by Rustoleum (not by the "old" Testors company). I have that glue in my arsenal. Mine is probably over 20 years old, and it is still probably 80% full (that shows how little I use that glue). It has a hypodermic applicator tube, and it came with a piece of stainless wire to ream the tube if it clogged. But even then Testors was under the RPM company's umbrella (along with Rustoleum).

Exactly. If you Google image search for "decal silvering" you will find lots of examples. Here are some: You will find mostly military subjects because those are usually painted using flat finish paints (when silvering is most likely to occur).

If those decals were available in a kit, you could post your request in the Wanted section of the forum. Someone might have a spare set. As an alternative you might want to check Rays Decals offerings. He might have these available already. https://rayskits.com/ https://public.fotki.com/RaysKits/

Jack, if you did a forum search you would find this type of info mentioned more than once. Here, I did such search for you (and yes it is my own post).

That's exactly my point. this world is becoming more and more like the old Wild West. Everything goes with no accountability. even when caught, you get a slap on the wrist, and continue to brake the law.

Well, not quite that easy. If there are any white decals, obviously your printer can't do that. You are also correct with the colors being off. There is some loss of color accuracy in the scanning process itself, but the biggest problem is that consumer printers print using translucent inks which for the correct color rendition require white base (the paper they are printed on). If you print the scan onto a typical transparent film decal paper and apply the decal onto any surface that is not white, it will skew the way the colors look. For example if a yellow decal is applied to blue surface, the yellow decal will look green. If applied to a dark surface, all the translucent printed colors will almost disappear. Many factory decals are printed using silk screening process where each color is actually opaque ink or paint applied separately to the paper, as where a home computer printer makes up all the colors using very small dots of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black ink. It will never look as good as the original decal. There are workarounds for the problem (like printing the color decal images onto a white decal film, then trimming the feel around the decal image, but that is a hassle. For the best quality a decal should be scanned, converted to a vector format, then printed using a printer which can print white and a white ink/toner, and also has the ability to apply the white under each color image. There are specialized printers which have those capabilities, but usually very expensive, making them out of reach for average modelers. There are decal companies which custom print decals for you, but it is not cheap, especially if you don't provide a print-ready artwork (as vectorizing and cleaning up a simple decal scan takes time). As you see, it is nowhere as simple as scan them print on your ink jet or color laser home printer.

Well, a related question is why do manufacturers think up and make these "accessories" in the first place? Probably because they think some people will buy them. And we have come a complete circle. Most people enjoy standing out in the crowd, and that can be done to various degree. I actually think the more subtle "angry looking" Jeep grilles look cool, but like everything else, it can be overdone, and instead of standing out, it gets freakish. But it is all individual point of view. Speaking of Jeep accessories I thought that the rules stated that only white or amber lights are allowed at the front of road vehicles, and I see plenty of Jeeps with green, red, pink, purple, blue "halo" ring lights around the headlight. I guess either the rules have changed or cops are too lazy to bother with them. I remember when "blue dots" in taillights were illegal too. That was subtle compared to those halo lights.

Sounds like that when we paint we should wear those disposable Tyvek full body suits used during hazardous substance decontamination, on in clean room manufacturing facilities.

Thanks again for the demonstration. Now I see that the supports are not right on the thin edge of the slats, but a bit higher on the wide surface. I'm learning all sorts of things without owning the printer, or using the slicer or CAD software.

Very interesting and educational Rob - thanks! Also interesting that few of the louver supports appear that they aren't attached to the back edge of the louver, but in other places. Or maybe they are still attached to the rear edge but at a different angle?

Very nice. Could you post a rendering of the successful grille with the supports on it? While I don't do any 3D printing, I'm always open to learning how others succeed in printing some amazing objects. There is a lot of science and even maybe art (and multiple tries) involved in successful 3D printing.