robdebie

There are several European custom decal makers that have massive catalogs. I know two, there are probably many more: https://decals.nl/ https://decalprint.de/ Rob

Thanks for showing, I had never seen this kit built. Look great! Rob

Bump after four months.. Still looking! Rob

Make that McDonnell-Douglas, instead of Lockheed. Rob

Barry: one more route is making website reports of your builds, and that's what I do. I often switch from model to model, and it's great to read back your own report to restart a project. Here's one example, of the Nunu 1/24 Kremer Porsche 935 K3. It's extensive because I did a lot of shape corrections. https://robdebie.home.xs4all.nl/models/kremer-k3.htm I'm using old-fashioned basic HTML for the website coding, so that's not much work. The photo shooting is considerable extra work, but generally I like the shots, so that's a reward in itself. Plus they are often useful in forum threads. Rob

Watch this video, you'll be impressed! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCKZ_fo4eW0 I bought a Paasche H after seeing this, and it gives me identical results. Here are some tests with all enamel brands that I had in stock. No polishing, no clear coat, one paint session. Rob

Did you leave the lids off for the outgassing? If so, the resin absorbed moisture, and foamed because of that moisture during the cure. I try to limit my resin's exposure to air / moisture as much as possible, but with every opening you let in fresh air with new moisture. When I reach the bottom of the bottles, they have had maximum exposure, and the mixed resin will foam, if not put in a vacuum. Fresh casting resin should not have any of these problems though. Rob

Best Balsa has a great decal set: https://www.bestbalsakits.com/tamiya/tamiya-detail.asp?kitnumber=3239 Rob

I use the 7-minute Smooth-Cast 305 (with some black dye), and I'm happy with its material properties after curing. I cast some fragile parts, like the jet nozzles right from center and the bomb fins in the center, and never had failures. On the other side, since the cure is slow, the resin doesn't heat up, and a hot cure of a fast resin might give better material properties. The drawback of a hot cure is that you'll have more shrinkage. Rob

I'm looking for the DVD-ROM 'Scale Auto Enthusiast - The First 35 Years'. In return I can do custom decals, or parts casting, or 3D part design and printing, or maybe something else. More on decals and casting can be seen on my website: https://robdebie.home.xs4all.nl/models/customdecals.htm https://robdebie.home.xs4all.nl/models/casting.htm There are eleven pages about 3D CAD and printing projects on the main modeling page: https://robdebie.home.xs4all.nl/models.htm I joined this forum in 2016., and made 379 posts so far. Rob de Bie Delft, The Netherlands

Building on Peteski's comments, maybe you can scrape the resin parts, to release the original smell. Rob

That's an amazing story - I had never heard of resin shrinking after being cast. I do know that polyester can shrink a bit after curing, in boats etc the 'fiber print through' will often develop over a week of so. But I'm guessing these car bodies are polyurethane as usual, and I've never ever read accounts or warnings of shrinkage after curing. Maybe your account of the two body halves contains a clue: it sounds like the paint caused the shrinkage. But even that I've never heard of. It's probably no help to you, but here's what I wrote about shrinkage on my webpage about vacuum casting (https://robdebie.home.xs4all.nl/models/casting.htm😞 - - - - - - Shrinkage A few words on the subject of shrinkage. Shrinkage can occur both in the mould and in the casting: regarding the mould: one of the reasons for choosing addition cure (platinum catalyst) silicone rubber over condensation cure (tin salt catalyst) silicone rubber is that the former has close to zero shrinkage. The latter shrinks during cure, and (amazingly) continues to shrink during its life. Therefore my choice is simple: I use addition cure silicone rubber, and the mould will not show shrinkage. regarding the castings: polyurethane resin itself shrinks very little during the curing reaction. However, there's a big 'but': when the resin heats up during the cure, because the cure is exothermic, it expands, pushing out some resin from the mould cavity. When it cools down after the cure reaction, the natural thermal shrinkage occurs, making the part smaller than the mould. The resin's potlife mostly determines the shrinkage: a fast cure means it gets hot, and a slow cure means it will hardly heat up. Fast curing resins can get so hot that they form steam bubbles in the centers of the castings! I use a 7 minute potlife resin (SmoothCast 305), and I never felt a temperature increase in the small parts that I produce. Therefore the resin hardly shrinks. SmoothOn lists less than 0.1%. I tested the above theory by measuring my largest casting, the ALE-2 chaff pod. The master is 87.5 mm long, and of the five castings that I measured, four were 87.7 mm, and one 87.9 mm. I blame the length increase on temperature differences of the days I cast the mould, and the days I made the castings. Silicone rubber has a large coefficient of thermal expansion: I found values ranging from 200 to 300E-6/°C. Compare that to polystyrene 70E-6/°C and aluminum 21-23E-6/°C. That means a 10 °C difference makes a 0.25% larger silicone rubber mould, and that equals the size increase from 87.5 to 87.7 mm of my ALE-2 pod. - - - - - - Rob

In my experience, epoxy putties don't stick well during application, so that might create the impression that it won't work. But once cured they are attached solidly. Rob

Yep.. It helps a lot to freeze the film every few second (use space bar), and study what you see. Each frame is quite sharp. Rob

Here's a third video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlSOAy21qmA Rob