Ddms

When I started airbrushing, I was incredibly stubborn about mixing it correctly. I just couldn't bring myself to thin it down enough - even though it was clogging and spraying lumpy paint. I blamed the brush; I blamed the paint; I kept increasing the airflow; I even went out and bought new nozzles. And all the time I was trying to spray it too effing thick! Some oddities: I've gotten a nice cloth look by spraying flat enamel thinned with lacquer thinner. I haven't tried using lac thinner with glossy enamel, but I've heard that it works well. One thing's for sure - it will dry faster. It you're using automotive urethane, be sure to thin it 4 parts low temp UR-40 reducer to 1 part paint. Lacquer thinner will thin it, but there's a risk of curdling.

If you want to try using real wood, check out model shipbuilding sites. They use a lot of it, so they know what works well in small scales. I think it's best to use a fine grained wood; the open grained woods (like balsa and pine) look out of scale and it's hard to get a smooth finish. The finest-grained woods are fruit woods like apple, pear and cherry, and some of the exotic woods. Wood needs to be aged to prevent warping, so cutting a branch off a neighbor's pear tree is not a good idea, unless you're willing to wait a year or two to actually use the wood. To flatten out any grain, it's also a good idea to use some kind of clear wood filler. You can see and order pre-cut fruit and exotic woods at Model Expo, http://www.modelexpo-online.com/page.asp?lp=8000. If you know what you want, there's a shop in my city that carries exotic wood. They have some very strange and exotic stuff, like Purple Heart. Scraps are available. It comes in fairly small pieces, mostly chunks, but you'll still need the right tools to cut it. Let me know what you need, and I'll see what they have available. Their stock changes frequently. It's usually sold by the pound.

Very, very nice work. I'm BRG with envy.

I've found that Tamiya Coarse compound will take Tamiya TS-series finish from 2000 grit (dull but no paint texture) to a very nice polish. For higher gloss, follow through with Tamiya Fine and Tamiya finish.

Nice example of automotive fine art. Very, very cool, sort of like mint tea over ice on a hot day.

Thanks! Very helpful answer. Keep working hard on that English grammar.

Me too. And it comes in a spray can, but it's gotta be sprayed on top of glossy black. I used it over Alclad black "lacquer" undercoat, and it looks fantastic. I don't know about any other undercoat. What did you use, Outlaw?

U-POL Powercan clearcoat isn't as "hot" as TS-13, and it gives a beautiful deep gloss with a minimum of orange peel. You can get it at Sam Ditchek & Sons. Ditchek must be a good store because it's in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Say what?

I love my Optivisor. I have not had good luck with off brands. I had one and it fell apart after a couple of years. The plastic got brittle and just broke in two.

Tamiya primer sticks well to PE. You can use any kind of paint over it. PE will polish up beautifully with silver polish or Tamiya Fine compound. To hold a piece - or a set - for polishing, I set it on carpet tape. The risk of polishing is that if you put a kink in it, it's really hard to make it flat again. To avoid bending it, sometimes I use my finger as a polishing cloth.

Oh. Spit! Why didn't I think of that? The film is another great idea. I've been putting little glue dots on PE pieces, but the glue always squishes out and makes a thick, shiny border around the badge or whatever. The wet film is a much cleaner and neater method. I usually use Tamiya X-22 Clear Acrylic for small bits of PE. It dries thin and clear. (Considering my use of glue dots, I guess that's good; if I'd used anything else, my PE would look really terrible.) X-22 can be thinned with water, alcohol or Tamiya Acrylic Thinner. I think the Tamiya would be best for the film method, since it has little surface tension and doesn't dry too fast. Using tape to "pre-align" the piece is the way to go. There's nothing worse than looking at a placed piece and thinking "F_*&# all!! It shoulda been more to the left!" For attaching large pieces, like long chrome strips, I picked up a nifty idea from the mad genius Gionc's WIP on the Porsche 356 Speedster. You lay the strips upside down on a strip of double-sided tape. I use carpet tape stuck to a piece of cardboard. Then go outside and lightly spray it with 3M Super 77 Multipurpose Adhesive. While the goo is still gooey, lift each piece with a toothpick, flip it, and carefully place it next to the masking-tape strip you've put on the car. Sometimes an end will spring up off the surface, and you have to press it down again, but eventually you'll get good adhesion. By the way, carpet tape is great for a lot of things, but it's too sticky for holding small pieces of PE. When you need the piece, the darn tape won't let go. Skills threads like this one are great! There's nobody in this hobby who doesn't have plenty to learn. Like the man said, "The more you learn, the more you realize how little you know."

Photoetch taught me that tweezers are the devil's own handiwork. That's something I finally figured out after boldly launching about fifty precious PE details into the cosmos, never to be seen again. Even if you use Karmodeler's bag - a great idea, BTW - to cut the stuff, there's still the problem of moving it from the sprue to the model. Now, instead of tweezers, I use a toothpick with a little piece of poster tack around one end. The poster tack grips the PE well enough to get it to its destination, and it will (usually) release it easily once it has arrived. Karmodeler also mentioned an Optivisor. I love my Optvsr. It makes handling all small parts a lot easier. It's good for lots of other things too - like painting details and trimming masking tape and BMF.

Another way to make grilles and vents is to get some ribbed plastic sheet and trim it to size. Then apply Alclad II to it. Dribble flat black between the ribs, quickly wipe off any excess, and you've got a pretty realistic vent or grille. Miniature corrugated metal sheet works too. For metal and plastic shapes, I search my local model RR shop, the Whistle Stop in Pasadena, CA. As to metals, the most "dangerous" material to tools is stainless steel (music wire) because it's so doggone hard. But it's great if you need a straight length, like a radio antenna. Unlike brass wire, stainless will keep its shape. I have a "dedicated" (ruined) pair of wire cutters that I use for stainless.

Wow, that is incredibly good. I am a total believer.

Thanks. On second thought, I might as well try sanding. The worst that can happen is that I'll have to strip and re-do the two coats. Actually, upon closer examination, I realized that a couple of the "dust spots" are actually sprue attachment points. But I'm going to go for it anyway. I'll make a 2000-grit sanding stick, put on my Optivisor and hit only the problems. Then I'll re-spray the metallic. Stay tuned.

I've just finished spraying some smooth "Baby Moon" style hubcaps for my Porsche 356 Speedster, and there are a few dust glitches under the Alclad. She-ite! I must have missed some dirt on the black Alclad-primed surface. Because of their shape, these caps really need to be perfectly smooth. I can strip and re-spray them, but is there another way to remove the glitches that would be less time-consuming? I was thinking of sanding the spots with 2000 grit and re-spraying with the Alclad II chrome.

Great tutorial! It seems there's nothing that will dissolve the filler once it's dry. Have you tried acetone? I've never used acetone for anything, and I have no idea what it does to styrene. And I hate the smell of my wife's nail polish remover. So that's a big question mark. But it would be nice if there were something that would completely remove the filler, short of sanding it off. It looks like it would hold edges - like panel gaps - very well. True? Have you tried to re-cut repaired panel gaps with a gap cutting tool?

Not sure which urethanes you mean, Mike. No hardener is ever needed for the 1k urethane basecoats that are sold by auto paint supply houses for small jobs, IOW, touch-up. My local FinishMasters mixes any color I want (PPG, DuPont, Nason, etc.) in 2 oz. bottles. He has swatch books I can select from, or I can give him a paint code. The thinning ratio is 4 parts reducer, one part paint. So a 2 oz. bottle ($14) covers a lot of territory! Some FX colors might cost more. My shop will order HOK specialty paints, but I don't use them. These paints "flash" (appear dry) to a smooth, semi-gloss finish in about a minute. No sanding is needed if they're sprayed properly. They can't be polished, so you'll need a clear coat. For a super-glossy look, nothing beats automotive 2K urethane clear. But I don't like super-glossy, so I use U-POL's Power Can. Tamiya TS-13 will work too. If you use these paints, follow the store's recommendation regarding reducer. My shop here in SoCal recommends - and sells - medium temp reducer. Hardware store lacquer thinner will work sometimes, but, depending on the temperature, it might also curdle the paint. Bad. But don't waste reducer on clean-up. Regular ol' lacquer thinner will do just fine. These are great paints. They flatten right down, don't sag or run, and give great coverage. They dry so fast that dust doesn't have a chance to land on the wet paint. But, as Kustoms says in his un-spellchecked message, you need to wear a pro painters respirator when spraying them.

Clear acrylic works too. And, while it may be yellow and it may be Testors, Testors Clear Parts cement also does a surprisingly nice job. That said, Formula 560 is still the most awesomest. The deal about "drying clear" is sort of a red herring. I don't want any cement drying on visible portions of my clear parts, even if it is clear. So the main concern is whether a cement will damage the plastic or be very hard to remove if it does get on those visible areas. For those reasons, plastic cements and superglues are to be avoided.

Lacquer thinner.

See if you can get some PETg. Hobby People carry it; aircraft modelers use it for vacuforming canopies. PETg forms easily with heat. It's clearer and glossier than acetate or styrene. Aircraft modelers do a lot of vacuforming. You might try to find an aircraft modeling forum and ask about their tools and methods.

Start by wetsanding with 2000 grit paper. Be sure to flatten down any orange peel. Then apply Tamiya Coarse compound. Look very carefully to see if there is still any OP or other paint texture. If there is, you can either keep compounding that area or hit it with 2000 again. When the finish is perfectly smooth - no paint texture of any kind - move up to Tamiya Fine. That will produce a nice shine, but not as glossy as you'll get if you take it to the next level with Tamiya Finish. That's it! As you can tell, I'm not a believer in multiple-grit micro polishing. I think the 2000+Tamiya method is easier, faster and produces a fantastic shine.