Chief Joseph

For you scratchbuilders, here's a heads-up: I was in Hobby Lobby the other day and noticed some new items in the diorama/train landscaping section. They were big sheets of textured white styrene; most of them were brickwork or wood siding in HO scale, but they also had a double-diamond style sheet in 1/24 scale. Looked to be perfect to make items such as running boards, tool boxes, and such. Quite a large sheet for about $6.50, and with a 40% coupon it's almost cheap

You could try a soak in something a little stronger, like brake fluid. Lacquers are very tenacious, and in my experience, much harder to strip than enamels. You may have to use an old stiff toothbrush to get the crud out of the details; be sure to wear eye protection when you do that.

Great job; I'm not a fan of the big-wheel look, but the wheel choice you've made gives the car a classy look

Natural animal hair brushes generally work better for enamel paint, and synthetic bristles work better with acrylics. The solvent you clean the bush with usually causes the most damage to the bristles... something like lacquer thinner absolutely kills nylon-bristle brushes! You can get a good brush cleaner & conditioner at art supply stores like Hobby Lobby, Michaels, and Dick Blick. If you use a lot of different kinds of paint, divide your brushes for use with solvent-based paints and water-based paints; don't use the same brushes for both paints. Austin, you can try soaking your frayed brush in some very hot water for a few minutes and then re-shaping the bristles with your fingers. It might go back into shape.

Oh, that color looks really close to the Expresso Brown that I need for one of my 1969 GTO models! I love that color and your Olds looks great

To get artwork that you can manipulate and edit into crisply-printed decals, you want to use a vector file format. The free Inkscape program is very good and will make just about any decal art you want. You can download it from www.inkscape.org. Unfortunately, all vector art programs are fairly complicated and require some dedication and practice to learn them. If somebody would make an easy-to-use vector drawing program, they would be very rich in a short amount of time. Plain old text decals can be made with a simple word processor-- as long as you have the correct font you can print it crisply at any size, because fonts are rendered as vectors. Dingbat fonts often have interesting artwork that can work as decals. Most clipart files in those big clipart collections are vector files too, usually WMF (Windows metafile) format. They can be imported into a word processor and resized with no loss of print quality. Raster/bitmap files can be used to print good decals, but they are severely limited; the decal that looks good printed at 1/8 scale might look like a blob at 1/25 scale.

Derick, I'm working on a couple of these models, too. Slowly, LOL. I have a ton of photos that I've taken and collected so if you need any specific images I may be able to help; just PM me. For a stock motor, the block and the heads would be painted black and the transmission would be natural metal with a black flywheel/converter cover. The intake manifold, water pump, and valve covers are natural aluminum.

For anyone who takes photos of their models for posterity: If your camera has a manual white balance setting, it's an easy procedure to hold a white card in front of the lens and set the white balance for your lighting conditions. Works extremely well for my modest Sony and Olympus cameras.

That's a cute little machine, but a watchmaker is going to use a real European watchmakers' lathe and a hobbyist will want to use something that has more options. Sherline and Taig lathes are far and away superior to this nano lathe.

Run hot tap water over the cap for a few minutes then it'll usually come right off. It might need a little gentle persuasion with pliers, but not much. As mentioned, keeping the threads clean will help prevent a stuck cap in the future.

Easiest way would be with a set of gasket punches, but good ones that make clean, sharp holes are not cheap. Another option is not cheap either: a mini lathe. You can use an Olfa circle cutter, which is quite a bit cheaper, but the one I have doesn't do smaller circles like 3/4" very well.

Frank, try contacting PCS Engineering in Maryland. They have some pretty serious printers that should help with your ragged lines.. Email is info@pcsenginc.com

Well, one rear wheel is dangling on the T-Bird and the grille is loose on the Lumina. Dust is very thick and sticky on both and the decals have yellowed a bit. This is one of the reasons why I love digital cameras-- now I can take a whole bunch of photos of my models and have a good record of them in case they meet a disaster or I give them away.

Here are a couple of my older models that I thought were lost. I found them out in the storage building in a box with some other junk... they did not fare too well, unfortunately. I built these somewhere between 1990 and 1993 I think. Boxing up all your stuff and moving it really sucks. There are still a few other old NASCAR models I haven't found yet, including an Irvan Kodak Chevy and the #3 Lumina that I had published in FSM's reader gallery years and years ago.

In my experience it can be both. I usually put filler onto the bare plastic (scuffed up a little with rough sandpaper), sand it down, hit it with primer, then fix any errors that show up with more filler and prime again. Repeat as needed. The filler I am specifically using these days is the cheap red Bondo brand glazing putty that can be bought in many retail places. Hope this helps

That's an excellent write-up on the subject, Art!

Just a few bucks by USPS. Badger picks up the return postage IIRC. I see you're in Canuckistan; you'll probably have to pay a few more of your dollars to send an airbrush to the USA.

FWIW, I sent in my Badger 200 (1985 vintage) a couple of years ago because the needle bearing was worn out and the bottle adapter tube had come un-attached from the main body. They replaced the body but the needle bearing in this new shell was cocked a little to one side. Instead of sending it back again, I just bought a new needle bearing and replaced it myself. Badger has a solid reputation when it comes to customer service, and the owner is a frequent visitor to several modeling forums.

Patience and perseverance, my friend. There's a photoetching thread in the General section that has some of my information in it. Speaking of photoetch, that's what I've spent a lot of time on the past week: Here's bland dashboard top after I cut it up: So that a new photoetched top with defroster vent and speaker grille details can be installed flush to the top: The kit's dash instruments are okay but sort of weird; the AC control represents the fancy automatic version that very few GN's had. The gauge cluster is the standard type. Here is the dash for the '87 with a GNX-style gauge cluster and standard AC controls: The '85 car will have the optional digital gauge cluster: I am adding seatbelts, too, and the front seats need the seatbelt guides on the headrests: Once I get all the engineering worked out on the seatbelts, I'll start painting the interiors. The bodies will be painted with the Yost method; here is a photo of the last test body I painted, a NASCAR Lumina, and I think I have the hang of it now. I'm kinda on the fence about putting the LED lights into the '87 car now; I'm itching to get moving faster on these cars and the LED work will slow me down quite a bit. Thanks for looking, Joseph

It looks great! If you want Out-Of-The-Box, then you have to live with Out-Of-The-Box; fine craftsmanship will overcome much of the detail deficiencies.

Looking great, Justin!

If you are meaning Microscale's Kristal Klear, then yes it is a fantastic glue. Much stronger than regular old white glue and dries perfectly clear! The goofy name is a drawback, I think. It's usually sold in hobby shops and you can find it with the other little Microscale bottles of decal solvent and liquid decal film.

Fantastic Justin! Keep it up and post some pics when you can. What metal did you use from the Micro-Mark set? The brass or the stainless? Stainless is really, really difficult to etch with Ferric Chloride alone.

I don't have a pic of the car body that I painted (it was a test shot and had four different base paints all cleared over) but here is the Klingon ship: Sorry for the large pics. The light green paint went on smoother than the gray paint, but after everything was covered in a gloss clear for decals and then semigloss clear, there was no difference. I also have an old King Ghidorah monster kit that I painted with craft paint a long time ago. In that case the paint was thinned with windshield washer fluid and the result was good. The trick is not to put too much paint on at one time because it has a tendency to run. Build up the color with several light coats. Craft paint isn't very tough paint, either; don't handle it too much and get a clear over it as soon as possible. Joseph

Yep, that's what the Liquitex Airbrush Medium that Dr Cranky mentioned is. It slows the drying enough to airbrush the acrylic paint and also helps with tip-dry. I painted a Klingon Cruiser a couple of years ago with craft paint thinned with water & Liquitex AB medium and it worked very well. The colors were perfect out of the bottle and as it's been said already, primer is a must. Just for fun, I recently painted a car body with some craft paint and then put clear lacquer over it and it worked as good as any other base coat.