Chief Joseph

Stencils are magic. I looked at desktop stencil cutters a while back and they were expensive as Doc says (around $600), but it could pay for itself quick if one were selling stock and custom stencils. Like decals and photoetching, making the artwork is probably the most complicated part of the process. This guy in Germany on these videos uses a staggering amount of stencils! Basically what he's doing going through the steps to make a silkscreened decal, but instead he's painting it onto the surface. The video of the comic book chick on the roof of the R/C VW Bug is great to illustrate his technique. The old way of cutting stencils was to tape a piece of acetate or frisket to a piece of glass, stick the original artwork underneath the glass and then get to work with an Xacto knife. I was never very good at doing that... Now you just prepare the artwork in digital space and print it to the cutter.

I print all my artwork on an HP Photo printer using overhead transparency film. I'll look around in my files and find some pics of raw parts and finished pieces.

I routinely make photo-etched parts using the same basic method employed by the Micro-Mark set. I can tell you that if you follow the directions, you will get good results. There are several steps that must be completed successfully in order to get a good finished piece; think of it like an algebra problem: if you make a little error at any step along the way, the final answer will be wrong. I'm contemplating writing a short how-to book explaining inexpensive at-home photoetching, but I don't have time to do anything anymore. If you guys have some specific questions, fire away either here in this thread or by PM and I'll do my best to explain.

And after you've cleaned it out, add a drop of Badger's Regdab or Iwata's Super Lube airbrush lubricant to the trigger to keep it moving freely. Those Badger models are bad to seep paint past the needle bearing back into the body, especially if you withdraw the needle from of the back instead of pulling out the front. I have a Model 100, which is the same as a 150 but with a gravity cup and that thing is a booger to clean out.

It's hard to come up with adjectives to describe this. Impressive, entertaining, complex, disturbing... take your pick. All of it is a work of engineering art and it's a testament to German craftsmanship. Thanks for posting this, Doc!

The future is happening right now, Casey! All the major model companies (like almost all manufactureing) are using 3D printing to help design their products. The technology is very popular in the science fiction, rail, and military modeling aftermarket, too. Right now it's being used to create high-quality masters for resin casting since the cost to produce resin parts from rubber molds is dramatically less than the current cost to directly print a 3D part. The gap is getting smaller as the technology is refined and becomes more widespread. The real key to quality is the model that's used to generate the part. 3D modeling has a fairly steep learning curve and the same methods used for video game models is much different than modeling objects for printing. I have done some work with the fellow who recently started Industria Mechanika (http://industriamechanika.com/blog/) and ALL of his new kits are being created with 3D printing and then cast in resin for the final product. The 3D printed parts are not quite perfect as they come from the machine and need a little hand-finishing before they can be molded. As the machines become better, less hand-finishing is needed. The current crop of desktop printers can produce some interesting parts, but they are very coarse and require a lot of work to turn them into something that's useable on a model. There are some internet startups that provide a marketplace for 3D models to be bought and sold; Shapeways (www.shapeways.com) is probably the best-known of these outfits. I know some guys who have dabbled with the Shapeways marketplace service, and so far it's nothing to really get crazy about because affordable parts are really small. Until there is a huge leap in the quality of desktop 3D printers, the average modeler will probably just be purchasing resin parts made from 3D masters. Before long, the cost to commercially print parts will be cheap enough allow us to order larger models from a printing service and have them printed on-demand and shipped to us. The last step, which is still a few years away to get high quality parts, will be us purchasing the rights to print a model at home for our own use. I imagine some sort of copy-protection scheme will be built into the digital files and the machines to prevent people from sharing the files they buy. I can imagine companies like Tamiya and Revell of Germany offering new models for sale online that we can print at home. Toyota and other car makers might even bypass traditional model companies and offer models of their cars directly. Whether the model companies will go back and re-create their older plastic models as 3D printer-friendly models is a big question. As always, the market will dictate what will be available. If you want a very specific model, then it will probably still be up to the individual to either create the digital model for 3D printing or make the model the old-fashioned way. The old CNC-based technology is still going strong in spite of the competition from 3D printing. You can't print an aluminum part just yet

That's the way I am making Eagle GT's for some Buick turbo Regal models. The sidewall lettering is photoetched also.

Hi John, You might be spraying a little too far away from the body for the tip size that you're using in your airbrush. Or your air pressure may be a little too high for your setup. There are a lot of variables at play. Donn Yost's method teaches to spray at 32psi with a Paasche H-5 airbrush (a big tip size; about the biggest airbrush tip you'll find) at anywhere from 2 to 6 inches from the surface. I'm sure Donn could tell you more, but I'd recommend just following through and seeing what happens as you continue to spray. Then you can adjust your method to fix the problems that you find. You can always strip the body and repaint since the enamel/lacquer mix is very forgiving.

Mr. Cheap, I'm sorry that your posts are ridiculed. I understood what you were trying to say. I've also learned a lot by reading the airbrush artists' forums.

While I'm here I might as well post a couple more pics of a previous test. This is a 1/24 Buick Grand National that was painted with Duplicolor black enamel decanted from a rattle can and sprayed with airbrush. This body had been scuffed but did not have a primer applied. The finish had quite a bit of orange peel to it but I polished out the roof and it looks okay but not great. Actually looks a lot like the real car did from the factory . I look forward to repeating this test with a Testors black enamel and lacquer thinner...

Okay, so I was a little bored today. I have been working on correcting some details on one of my 1/24 69 GTO bodies but I decided since the weather was nice I needed to get in another practice paint job. I opened up one of my NASCAR kits and pulled out a body to play with: a 1/24 Monogram Lumina molded in white. I knowingly violated at least a couple of Donn's "P" rules, though-- I did not wash the body and I did not scuff it or try to correct any flaws. All I did was wipe it down with some thinner and started painting. The paint was a gloss brown 1/4-oz Testors bottle that I have had for years but it had never been opened. Mixed 2:1 paint to lacquer thinner and sprayed at 32psi with a Paasche VL with #3 (medium) nozzle. Ambient temperature about 61-62 degrees. For this test I tried to spray a little closer to the body and reduce the volume of paint I was putting out on each stroke. My goal was to reduce the orange peel problems that I've had on my previous tests. I still picked up a little bit of texture in the finish, though, as you can see in the reflection in the second photo. Also picked up a few spots of dust as I was nearing the end of the paint job. Dust is one of the things I have a hard time overcoming because of my paint environment. After this dries for bit in the paint booth (fan off, naturally), I will put it in a hot box and see what happens. Way back in the age of dinosaurs (the 80's), we used to paint with enamels and then at the very end of the paint job, we'd put thinner (usually mineral spirits) into the jar with the paint that was left over and spray the body with this mix (basically tinted thinner) and it would make the gloss pop out like crazy and all the orange peel would flow out and level. It would also run very easily if you weren't careful. We called it a "kiss coat." Is anybody still doing that?

There is a very slight possibility that the part can be saved by baking it for a few hours in a hot box or toaster oven @ 150F. Sometimes this process will drive out the residual oil from the part. It is a long shot, though. If I were you, I'd ask the vendor to replace the part because it is entirely a casting error. I just answered this same question over on another forum the other day... I wonder if the same resin maker is involved...

That is the truth!!

I have switched to Mold Star rubber for just about everything I do now; Smooth-On claims that it does not need to be vacuumed and that is true up to a point. It mixes much thinner than their other rubbers and has a long open time so the bubbles have time to rise. I still vacuum it because most all my casting is done under pressure and I don't want any trouble. Their older formulas of Mold Max tin rubber and Smooth-Sil platinum definitely required vacuuming. If your master is good and solid, you can pressure-cure the rubber after you've poured the mold instead of vacuuming it, but the master had better be solid. Your blower scoop looks really nice! I've always heard that Micro-Mark sells repackaged Smooth-On products, at a much higher cost. I've never had any in my hand so I can't confirm that.

Not too bad. The smaller sizes are of course more costly than buying the gallon sizes.

The resin & rubber I use in my commercial work is Smooth-On. Their Smooth-Cast 321 resin is super-easy to work with and has a 6-8 minute pot life. That's important for me because I mold a lot of complex parts that require special handling and I like to pour a whole bunch of resin in each casting cycle to maximize my productivity. They have some newer platinum rubber called Mold Star which sets up in just a few hours and has virtually no shrinkage, plus you don't have to bake it or sacrifice the first casting to get the excess alcohol out of it like you do with tin-cured rubber. It's available in a soft and a firm version, and will yield many castings. I've tried Alumilite, Ace, and Polytek products too-- all of them will work, but for all-around performance I choose Smooth-On. They make a whole range of different products to meet the needs of all kinds of craftspeople. No, I don't own stock in them The distributor I buy from is The Engineer Guy in Atlanta, www.theengineerguy.com. Super customer service.

I have been avoiding selling on Ebay for years now simply because of the goofy stuff that some buyers will pull. In my model aftermarket business, I send stuff by USPS International First Class all the time and <knock on wood> I haven't had much trouble other than the occasional really slow delivery. Brazil and Italy, though; I hold my breath each time I mail to those countries because of the horror stories I've heard. Other countries, like Australia, New Zealand, and pretty much all of Europe (except the previously mentioned boot-shaped country) are a breeze. Canada just takes forever to deliver a parcel. I appreciate and love my international customers-- they still have some money to spend!!

Hi William; I've been using a small Taig lathe for a few years and I absolutely love it. With a small lathe like this you can easily make certain kinds of wheels with just the basic left/right cutting tools. You should get a set of center drills just because they are handy, but most hole-making operations are done with a boring bar. For the past couple of days I have been trying to figure out how to reproduce a Shelby Vector wheel in 1/24 scale using my lathe to make the basic shape and then adding the fins with styrene. I have an index wheel on my lathe that allows me to lock the spindle at different positions; I use it in conjunction with a Dremel tool mounted in the toolpost to drill holes and mill flutes/slots/whatever around the workpiece at precise intervals. For instance, the lug holes on a wheel can be drilled with perfect accuracy with the workpiece still mounted on the lathe. Some more complex work on the wheels just can't be easily done on a lathe, like cutting spokes. That kind of work usually requires a mill and some fairly costly items like a rotary table. These days, real wheels are designed in 3D with a computer and cut out with a CNC mill, which is sort of out of the scope of what you probably want to do. I'd be happy to help you with any other questions you have.

There's one more secret weapon to Donn's method that I really didn't appreciate until I actually tried it: the metal pipe nipple used to hold the body. It sure does make it easier to twist and turn the body shell to get the paint into the little nooks and crannies.

I've never had mold grow on a model, but I have a tub of Turtle Wax that regularly grows a white mold on the top of the wax... I open it up, scoop off the layer of moldy wax and throw it away, then the next time I open the tub there's more mold. To me it's weird edited for spelling... gosh I hate the autocorrect on Apple IOS sometimes...

That's a beauty. Those Italian sports cars from that era were works of art and you've captured the look and attitude perfectly with your build.

I've had good luck using Donn's method, too. I've learned to not be afraid of putting too much paint on the model-- the more the merrier (just until the gloss kicks in, anyway). I've been using a gravity-fed Iwata Eclipse for most of my modeling for the past few years, but when I decided to do some cars I dusted off my trusty Paasche VL. One thing I need to do is swap the medium nozzle set with the heavy nozzle set; more paint output means less time spent painting and less chance of airborne gunk landing on the wet paint! Now if I could just get the weather to cooperate...

Okay thanks for that; I was not reading your original post correctly and missed that you specifically wrote "reducer" Having a bunch of teenagers in the same room playing Modern Warfare 3 on Xbox made me a little loopy earlier today I have painted test car bodies five different ways over the last month or so, and so far my favorite method is plain old Duplicolor auto enamel from a rattle can, decanted and sprayed with airbrush. I am testing with black paints because I figure if I can get a high-quality finish in black, then other colors should not pose too much trouble. I still have two methods to test: urethane clearcoat and Future clearcoat. I haven't painted a model car in almost 20 years and my brain has gotten so used to painting military models that it's like I'm starting all over again, and my standards have risen quite a bit in 20 years. If I decide that enamels are the way I go, I am definitely investing in a dehydrator! But I need to give urethane a try because of all the great models I've seen here.

Bradley, when you say you are thinning the 2:1 urethane to the consistency of milk, are you adding additional catalyst/activator?

Thanks for the responses; you have been very helpful. I know the owner of a body shop but have hesitated to ask for any of this kind of paint because I didn't want to put him in an uncomfortable position with liability. There is a PPG dealer about 20 miles from me and I'll check with them about getting a small quantity. As I understand, for painting models it is preferable to use a urethane system that also has a reducer, in order to thin the clear more than you would normally thin it for 1:1 cars. This is the 4:1:1 systems, right? 4 parts clear to 1 part activator to 1 part reducer, except you add a little more reducer to get a thinner "scale" coating?