Scale-Master

There's actually enough flex in the bottom/nose that I didn't need to cut the bottom at all. But then it only has to go together once.

The wheels are on the simple side, but a little paint does wonders. The tires on the other hand are not correct but I'll use them anyway.

The decals were very workable, after applying the ones for the tires and dash I had no worries about them cracking or being overly fragile due to the sun-bleaching. They responded well to solvent and that was needed to get the Gold Leaf logos to conform to the bulge of the fuel tanks and the gold around the nose. I mixed a gold for the front wings to go with the decal from Tamiya Titanium Gold and Clear Yellow.

After a few coats of TS-26 Pure White have had plenty of time to dry, it's time to start masking… The red was built up until it more or less matched the other parts painted the same color a decade or so ago. (Yes, it is the same batch of paint.) This looks acceptable. Now it will sit and cure for at least a month, maybe two, maybe more.

A couple rounds of spot repairs in addition to the cracked areas at the cockpit, and a coat of white primer, and it looks ready for some TS-26 White. By 2011 I had a pretty good idea of what the cause of the issue was, and after a dozen years I'm sure that I have figured out the root issue from working with the same paints in different applications and combinations on several other projects since I started this one. Those later ones all turned out well and have proven to be stable long term as well. The fluorescent red cures at a much different rate than other TS colors and the clear. Yes, it dries in about the same time frame and even feels dry to the touch, but it takes a lot longer to fully cure than both most other TS colors and the clear. While the clear also takes longer to cure than many TS colors, if it is applied to the fluorescent red before the red is fully cured, it can shrink and pull the softer red paint out of shape as it did on this body. The process that has worked long term every time for me is simple, use a urethane clear coat instead of the lacquer clear and let the red dry for a good bit longer than other TS colors.

Much of the layers of red and white were clearly softened by the brake fluid, but nothing sloughed off as hoped. I scraped the gummy-ish paint off and gave it a good water rinse before wet sanding for the better part of the afternoon. I should have taken a photo, but I went straight to sanding since it was still almost as nasty looking as the earlier photos. Overall I am pleased with the progress.

I decided to try brake fluid. I am not a big fan of using it for stripping due to the damage it can do to some plastics, but even the 100% denatured alcohol wasn't cutting through the older paint. I mummified the body with wetted paper towels and let it soak like this for about half a day. The red bleeding out looked like a good sign.

The sides/rear are a different situation. I softened the red a little with more alcohol and tried to scrape it off. The right side was always more troublesome during the curing issues than the left for some reason. It is many layers deep and rather nasty.

While I was doing research on the 1/43rd scale Lotus 56 I pulled this from my stash. I decided to build it too. This is the old MPC kit in 1/25th scale. It will essentially be a curbside so that the body will fit better than having the top sections removable, but I'll build all the internal stuff too. I built up the insides, engine and suspension and was able to make it a standalone subassembly so the seam on the nose could be filled. Most of the parts are chrome plated so they were stripped first.

The body is painted and ready for decals… Tamiya lacquers.

I softened the front section with alcohol and was able to scrape much of it off, then I hand sanded it smooth. Some of the red on the rear peeled off too, with a good amount of forceful persuasion. What had peeled off easily was only on the surface. There's still a lot of paint under it. There is good news as the cracks near the windshield were in the paint, not the plastic.

The suspension on these kits is actually engineered pretty well, but due to the nature of the white metal some parts had to be bent into shape. This one took a good amount of fiddling to get the wheelbase equal on both sides with no binding between the body chassis and suspension.

Keep in mind Rich, this happened a decade ago. I shelved it for a while. I do have a new kit, but I want to save this one. There's no reason to alert Tamiya about this as the paint is a decade old. Not the same batches as what is available now. I still use the TS-36, it is a good paint. Other things were at play that created this issue I now know for the experiences I learned on this and subsequent projects. I have used the TS-26 over several base colors and it has some very good properties.

I washed it up to get a better idea of what I was dealing with. The only option, as I see it, is to strip it. Unfortunately the many layers of paint might as well be a combination of CA and stucco. About 15% of it peeled off to what appears to be the base white. I guess I forgot how many layers of both white and red paint I applied trying to get this to look decent and most of the red is now hard as glass and really well adhered. (So it does eventually cure.)

To recap, I started this in September of 2009. In January of 2011 I started noticing paint issues like cracking on the nose. At that point it was all TS paints including the clear. I fixed the nose by hand painting the damaged decals and then I sealed it in urethane. Then the paint on the rear wing went bad and I had to make new decals as replacements were not available. For five years I chased the paint on the main body. In my mind I had to keep using the same TS paints until I could get a stable finish and apply the decals. Then the plan was to clear it with urethane (as I had done with the nose and rear wing). I would get it looking nice and a few to several months later it would pick up waves or even wrinkles. I'd sand and buff them out, wait until the paint seemed cured and stable only to have it happen somewhere else. Well, the paint never stabilized as of 2016 so I went on to several bigger and better projects and let the body sit in a safe place. Out of sight, out of mind... And it really got bad; wavy, wrinkly and just plain wonky over the years. The body actually cracked somehow. I'm not sure if it was due to the paint, but it wouldn't surprise me. From this point on I am sharing the current salvage work after putting it on hold for over nine years. Here is what I'm re-starting with after I peeled some of the clear off. I'm surprised it shed that so easily.

This is from 9-4-2015 (exactly 8 years ago): It’s been well over a year since I last updated the work I’ve been doing on the body. Every month or two I’d sand the wrinkles out and let it set, only to have new ones appear. Sand them out, wait and repeat. It looks like it might have finally stabilized, but I won’t be too surprised if it reoccurs either. After all, it’s been the better part of five years since I started painting the body… Last night I took another stab at it and after sanding out some ripples I blended in some red on the right side and sharpened up the lines on the front with some white.

1988 Monogram kit of a fictional plane. It's supposed to be able to fly at Mach 25. Fun project. WIP:http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/topic/184228-x-30-supersonic-aircraft/

I added more silver decal stripes for the color break on the tails too.

The kit decals were what one would expect considering the age and level of detail in the kit; not great and a bit out of registration, but at least decal solvent was mildly helpful on them. However they do not react well with a hair dryer. The two red stripes on the underside refused to conform to the basic contours so I replaced them with Scale-Master silver decal stripes.

While it could be 1/144th scale, I think that is a misconception as the the stock number is coincidentally #1144. There is no mention of scale on the box or instructions. It's hard to figure the scale of a fictional subject with no known elements to scale off of, but judging from the windows (decals) I would guess it to about the same size an XB-70 Valkyrie. If so, that puts it closer to 1/200 scale.

I followed the painting instructions for the most part but used black in some of the places it called out dark blue. (The box art has black/gray in those areas and it looks more believable.)

The gauge decals went on fine too…

OK, this thing has been sitting for quite a while (many months) due to the paint fighting with itself on the main body. Most of the car is done; I just need to finish the body. A few times I sanded out the wrinkles (on the right rear) and touched up the paint only to have the issue come back a month or so later, so I stopped touching it up but continued to sand out the wrinkles as they appeared every few months. I thought I had won the battle back in April 2012, but sadly the same thing happened a little while after I painted it once again. I continued to sand it as problems manifested, but I noticed it has been pretty stable all year. It’s been about 6-8 months since I last sanded the problem area and it looked the same as when I last checked. First I had to blend the white base in, and I found by tinting white primer with yellow and pink I could apply less paint and get an even blendable base. Then I started building up the Fluorescent Red. You can see what I painted yesterday does not match, (it is too pale and lacking vibrancy, and not 100% uniform), but it is all the paint I can apply this round. Today I built up some more TS-36. Still not there, but getting closer… It still needs another round of paint, but I’ll probably let this dry for a while to make masking easier…

1988 Monogram kit of a fictional plane. It's supposed to be able to fly at Mach 25. This is four of the six parts of the plane. (There are two more parts for the stand too.) The fit was pretty good but there were a few shrink marks that had to be filled and a bunch of ejector pin spots too. I shot it with Tamiya TS-100 as it is a close match to the color it was molded in, and the instructions show to use the plastic as one of the colors.

All eight tire decals went on just fine, so clearly there are no ill effects of sun-bleaching there.