Brendan

Scale Motor Sports makes a textured spray that might work. Also when I worked in a hobby shop, the crafts department carried a spray paint that would give a crackle effect. It would look like a vinyl, but I don't remember the name of it.

I usually can find the primer at NAPA and Carquest auto supply stores. It's usually hidden in the back in the paint sections.

For a so-called quick boring build, it looks really nice. Sometimes you have to do projects like this to have a change of pace.

I have the same problem. The way I've been doing it is by loading either one or two pictures at a time. And I still run into the problem with the second picture. Every time I've loaded one picture at a time, it works fine and seems to be faster. I'll give it a try again tonight and see what happens.

Was wondering if anybody who's tried the clearcoat...if they'd done over any other paints. And also wondering if the clearcoat yellows at all.

The next kit I'm building is Studio 27 Peugeot 908. I started the kit 2 days ago. Not much to the kit. The kit only has 4 resin pieces which are the chassis and the body. The rest is all pewter, which I'm not fond of. In my opinion, they should be doing more in resin. Pretty simple paint scheme, except for trying to get the black to match up. It's supposed to be bare carbon fiber, but it's a black on black weave. And I do not want to do it all in decal. I'm figuring to spray it a gloss black, lay down the decals, and then put a dull coat over the top to give it an unfinished look. But I'll see as I go along. Here's what I have so far. Intake and front chassis mount and rear section of the diffuser attached to the body. All the pewter parts painted and ready for detailing. Rims painted gloss black and awaiting Alclad Aluminum. Disk brake rotors painted. The disk brakes are incorrect for the car; I'm thinking about replacing them. Should look more like the Audi R10 rotors. Should get more updates soon.

Very nice, clean model. Was wondering what paint you used for the seats. Can't wait to see when you get the kit finished...one of my favorite paint schemes of that car.

Very cool, you got it done. It looks good.

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions about airbrushing. I know more about the Pasche line than others.

Raul, Thank you for the kind words! I had the same problem with trying to take pictures while working through projects. I started doing it more when I have customers buying kits. It's kind of nice to be able to show them that you're actually getting something done. Also helps when you have a decent camera. I used to have an old inexpensive HP camera that didn't work too well. I'm working on Studio27's Peugeot 908 LMP1 car. Hopefully I'll have it done by the NNLWest. Paint scheme is a little more complicated but there's not a whole lot of detail in the cockpit. It's mainly just different shades of black in the cockpit. I'll add some wires here and there, but not much considering you can't see much inside the car. I'm debating if I want to put it in "On The Workbench" section, but will put pictures up when I'm finished with it.

The kit is a Profil24 Porsche 997 IMSA Performance GT2 Le Mans Winner 2007. Finished the kit this afternoon. Fun build but with some pitfalls along the way. You can see the progression in "On the Workbench" Section. http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=8578 Took me a little under a month to finish the kit. The paints that I used were Tamiya's TS-26 for the body and TS-49 and X-4 for the touch ups on the decals. The paints were decanted and airbrushed. Kit was done box stock. Comments are welcome.

Hate to tell you this but I beat you to it. I did the C5R Corvette in pink about 2 years ago for a girl next door. But your car looks way better than what I did. It was a quick 2-day build; ended up using Tamiya's acrylic pink. Surprisingly the car doesn't look that bad in pink.

Got the clear coat on. Finished up all the small detail work on the body. Just finished putting the chassis into the body. My main problem now is trying to make the back tires fit into the wheel wells. The tires are a little too big for the kit. Next time you see the car, it will be in the "Under Glass" section. Thanks to everyone who's commented and following along with the build. I'll give a review when I finish the kit. All the detail painting for the inlets and photoetch applied to the vent openings. Chassis and exhaust added.

That was what I thought I had said. That they poured it into the mold. But thank you for clarifying.

Cody, I usually use Scale Motor Sports carbon fiber decals. They're excellent decals. I've had no problems with them. Two things that could have occurred with your decal. The first thing that comes to mind is that the Duplicolor Clear Coat started eating the decal, which is not uncommon. The second thing is if there was a scratch in the decal, the solvent from the paint could have seeped under the decal and ruined it. For my clear coats, I'll use Future Acrylic. (I've never had it do anything to decals.) Another one I use is Testor's Clear Coats in the spray can. The one I really like using is called Floquil Crystal Coat, but you'll need an airbrush for it. I try to stay away from lacquer based paints for clear over decals. The lacquer has the tendency to eat decals if they're not of a good quality, especially if you're using the spray cans since the solvents in the spray can will often ruin the decals. Hope this is helpful.

You've kind of answered your own question. The way the manufacturers do it is by high pressure injection, which is less likely to get air bubbles in the plastic. It is also cooled immediately in the die by running cold water through the die. The reason why you don't see resin casters do this is that it's too expensive to do as well as it puts a lot of wear and tear on the molds. Also they are doing a low pressure injection which is more likely to get air trapped into the material. (They usually pour the resin into the mold.) They can also get air bubbles while mixing the resin up. A TV Program called How It's Made (Discovery Channel) shows how they do high pressure injections which may explain it better than I can. They have repeats occasionally.

Thank you for the tips. I use those tricks all the time, but the problem I was having with the decals was more due to the fact they were so thick. I could get one edge down and slowly work it to the other side (Micro Sol at full strength didn't even touch it) and then I'd have to readjust it to get it into the right position. I had to do several relief cuts into the decals to make them work. The decals are just bad decals. Profil 24 switched to a different decal manufacturer. In the past two kits I've done I've had major problems with the decals. Besides not wanting to stick, they are not sized correctly for the model so I had to improvise to make them work. It turned out okay in the end, I think.

You can use Micro Sol on Tamiiya decals. But the trick is to dilute the Micro Sol with water...should be a 50/50 mixture. I do this all the time with Tamiya decals. The problem is that Tamiya's older decals are not of good quality and there's been so many complaints that Tamiya switched over to Cartograph, which will accept solvents just fine. 935K3's methods will work. Just take your time and don't panic. They may seem ruined, but if you wait you can get them to lay down flat.

Got the decaling finished last night. Had some friends send me a bunch of pictures to get the decal placement right. The pictures in the kit didn't show where a lot of the decals go. Once the weather gets a little better around here, I'll shoot Clear coat on it and get the rest of the small detail done. Took quite a while to get the rest of the side decals on. Probably another 2 hours. Ran into the same problems. Finished decaling before trimming the decals from openings. Before and after shot of the fuel inlet.

The interior detail won't be too obscured. You can see quite a bit through the window openings. I know what you mean by when you do all the detail and then it gets covered up by the body and you can't see into the car. It happened to me when I did an Aston Martin DBR9. The windows are so small, you can't see into the car.

Started the decaling. It took over 5 hours to get the red decals on. I've run into problems with the decals not wanting to stick. Having to use a lot of setting solution to make it work. The other problem I'm running into is that the decals do not fit properly. They should be mirror images of each other, but one side is longer and the other side is shorter. I'm starting to wonder if the decals weren't originally for a slot car body and not this kit. Even though these are the decals that came in the kit. I would just like it that when a company makes decals for a kit, they actually fit. Hope to get more done tonight. Here's some pictures of what I've completed so far, which is not much.

It is basically box stock. I've only added the seat belt material and one control box that is attached to the X part of the roll cage. It can't even be seen. I think that's the reason they left it out of the kit. The big disappointment I have so far with it is the roll cage. For one thing, it's not a full roll cage, and for another thing, the parts they do have are incorrect. Last, parts had to be modified to make it fit properly (biggest irritation/pissed me off). I had wanted to do a kit that required little thinking. I know there's problems, but they're not going to be fixed. The kit is not bad, all in all, so far. Everything else seemed to dry fit pretty well. Painted the black on the window trim and decalling starts tomorrow. Things are going slowly for me since I've been dealing with a bad head cold. But things should be picking up soon.

I agree with Hollywood Jim. Plastruck would be your best bet. I have used it in the past and it works very well. There are some aftermarket manufacturers that make lug nuts/rivets out of aluminum, but they can be pricey.

Yes, greed is the major part of it. But if I owned a company and someone used my name to sell something that was not of good quality, wouldn't that make my company look bad? I'm of the belief that a name signifies quality and one would want to protect that quality. But it is frustrating not to be able to use a decal on a model car. It seems that it should fall under the protection of art. But the law doesn't see it that way.

The font of the text is also copyrighted for names. I had a good friend who was sued by a major company not for using the name, but for the font that name was written in. As for Goodyear, the price to use their name is very expensive. Tamiya now is no longer putting it on their older F1 cars that they are releasing. Tamiya used to be able to get around this by going to Formula 1 when they had contracts with Goodyear, which gave Tamiya the right to use the Goodyear name. The way I see it, it's free advertising for them. But I do understand that they do have to protect themselves. Just my 2 cents.