Zoom Zoom

Count me among the ones who primarily search Ebay Motors and Google Images and Autocolorlibrary for good reference in between preliminary grokking and actually starting to prepare the body for paint. Body prep/paint is the first actual step of real work on the kit. The better it looks painted (or primed), the better chance it has to get done w/o being shoved aside for something else.

The BMF polish seems to be identical to Novus #2 (by both testing and "sniff test"), and there are quite a few good polishes for enamels. Tamiya compounds work well on enamel, Scratch X works well too. However the Novus product has given me the best results with enamels in general; it does a great job of polishing w/o any chemical softening. My favorite combo these days is Tamiya compound on Tamiya lacquer, it's amazing how it often negates the use of Micromesh cloths. Otherwise 3600/4000 and then compound and it's generally a great finish. In the old days before Micromesh I used Testors/Flexigrit Micron sanding sheets to wetsand before buffing out the paint.

Actually Harry the press release does mention doing new tooling as well as reissues (I double-checked it to make sure I hadn't committed any mortal sin with my previous post). However I'm siding with caution; too many times we've been left hanging when good intentions, good people and good leadership still didn't result in something that I could actually buy Here's an excerpt: "We will not rely solely on old tooling, but will develop new tools as well.†It may be quite awhile before we see much fruit harvested from this new venture. I hope the reissues are a lot more unique than what was being spit out in mass quantity for the big box stores. And I certainly want to see some fresh new stuff! They could do worse than issue a couple of the AMT items that never hit ('50 Olds, Bulletnose Stude, Foose-style modern stuff) and perhaps take a bit of a gamble on subject matter that's been sorely ignored. In the meantime I've got plenty to work on, and between Revell, Revell of Germany, the Japanese, and the resin companies I'm already still able to purchase far more than I can possibly keep up with.

I have too, but my first attempt with it almost was my last. I bought a can of AMC "Big Bad Blue" to paint a resin '70 AMX, and that stupid nozzle spattered like mad Yes, my face looked just like that I decanted it, added a few drops of Gunze Mr. Color Thinner, and found that it would spray properly. I finished it properly months later after sanding the sloppy first coat down . I've since had decent results a few times from the can, but it's nowhere near as reliable to spray as Tamiya, and as I said before I'm decanting nearly all of it all now because I'm tired of wasting so much paint that doesn't hit the surface I'm spraying. I also had trouble w/Testors clear lacquer blushing if not decanted, something that's not happened w/Tamiya. The Testors clear dries faster (probably why it blushes) and harder; Tamiya compound works a lot better on Tamiya lacquer vs. Testors. Testors lacquer metallic particles also seem grossly out of scale. I shot Artesian Turquoise on a resin '65 Chevelle 2 door wagon and it looked like a bass boat. I decanted it, and it still was lousy. While it dried I quickly mixed up Testors/Boyds enamels (greens/blues/silver chrome trim which is a great scale metallic pigment) to match and airbrushed a light layer over the lacquer almost like a candy color, and immediately covered it w/the Testors lacquer clear w/o incident. Sometimes you do what you gotta do!

The only place I can reliably find Plastikote primer is at Michael's, and they seem to be in most suburban areas so try that. You can also find retailers from the Plastikote website. Their primer seems much easier on plastic than Duplicolor, from my experience. Testors enamels get a deservedly bad rap in some instances. While those of us that airbrush them have good luck, and they do airbrush beautifully, the spray cans are utter garbage. The thin pigment is magnified when it's shot out of a lousy spray nozzle onto a model car; the stuff would run long before it would cover properly. I will never again subject any model to the russian roulette of using a can of Testors enamel on it. It's bottle or nothing for me and Testors enamels. I prefer decanting/spraying their lacquers as well; Testors will never install a nozzle with 1/10 the quality of a Tamiya paint nozzle. And I tend to decant that stuff too Sure wish Testors/Tamiya would bottle their lacquers.

I've been using lacquer thinner w/Testors enamels since the early 80's. Henry Gonzalez was the guy who painted all the Model Master and car paint subjects for Testors new products back then, and he gave me two of the best tips possible for using Testors enamels; first to use lacquer thinner to speed up drying, and second to use "Bare Metal Foil" polish, which is basically Novus #2 in a small container. Back then I was generally spraying barrier on a model before painting, then thinning/spraying automotive touch up paints. When Testors greatly expanded their colors I started using them a lot. When I got a dehydrator in the '90's my building speed really got a shot in the arm. One thing I've noticed w/the cars I sprayed back then w/barrier and auto touch up paints is the paint is very brittle. If a hood gets flexed even a small bit, the paint cracks. Enamels don't do this. I believe I often skipped priming after the barrier, but that was so long ago I can't remember.

Back when I used Testors enamels regularly, if I was shooting a metallic or pearl I found they were always terribly weak in pigment. In those cases my primer consisted of a good coat of a similar color of non-metallic solid-color enamel. Often I mixed my own solid and metallic colors. I used to use the gray Testors primer sometimes, but only as a color block since it wasn't a real primer. I only use lacquer primers now; Plastikote white or gray for basic stuff, Tamiya white or gray fine primer for finer work. My recent '74 Caprice shown here was painted in enamel over a base of Plastikote gray primer since I had done a good bit of prep work/sanding/filling of the body. Also I commonly poured off a lot of the separated clear from those metallics before thinning. They put all that clear in the metallics so they'd be shiny...I think Testors enamels are the main reason a lot of people gave up the hobby before getting any good at it. Gimme lacquers any day!

I'm glad someone is interested in keeping the AMT brand name alive. I'm a bit dismayed that AMT is seen by many builders as nothing more than a tool bank of old stuff that all needs to get reissued as if it's all a gold mine of oldies under the Christmas tree. Nostalgia is one thing, but I've already got a basement full of nostalgia. The Model King reissues definitely are fun, but they don't trip my trigger nearly as much as an all-new subject that's been engineered from the ground up to be a state-of-the-art kit for serious builders. Unless AMT/Polar Lights/MPC start making some popular all-new kits at least to the level that AMT was doing before they were unceremoniously gutted, my personal opinion of all of this is a great big "meh". Onward and upward, looking forward...no staring in the rearview mirror dreaming as if it was still 1963 (or even 1995, for that matter). Reissues get boring, RC2 reissued way too many models way too often. Modified reissues are a lot cooler (Revell does it well). All-new kits are the best. I wish the new stewards of AMT/Polar Lights/MPC all the best.

It pays to read the fine print in the auction

I use a Sharpie for a lot of details, such as the edges of modern lenses, blackening the inner glass surrounds (much easier than brush painting or masking/shooting), or even colored Sharpies for red/amber lenses (I don't use my Tamiya clear red anymore, it's much easier to use the Sharpie and there's no film thickness, dries very fast). I don't use a Sharpie for exterior window trim because it's too shiny for my taste. My favorite brush paint for window trim is Testors Acryl flat black, and for spraying I like to decant Testors or Tamiya flat black spray and shoot it through the airbrush. Silver Sharpies are great for detailing small items that need silver paint.

Chris has shown the most important aspect, and that is if your camera has aperture priority, use it! Makes a world of difference for depth of field; so everything is in focus. You need a lot of light, and your camera probably has a way to easily set your "white balance" and lightness/darkness. Once you get the settings, and learn how to use macro, it's pretty easy. And you can practice all you want, and delete your practice shots until you get them right. My camera also has a "scene" feature, with one of them "indoors". This is the setting that I take pics of models at a show or club meeting; the quality isn't as good as my studio shots, but they are bright and mostly in good focus, though I can't use aperture priority in this mode. My camera also has image stabilization, to compensate for shaky hands or low light situations, or telephoto shots without the need for a tripod. One of the greatest inventions for a digital camera! My old show photos often were blurry, sometimes even when I used a tripod. Going around the tables w/a camera and tripod was obnoxious. I eventually quit taking table shots until I got a better camera.

I prefer spraying the trim, or freehanding with a brush. Even when you think it's burnished, the sheer volume of wet paint from a brush seems to find any and all gaps and it bleeds. Spraying it allows me to build it up slowly, and if the trim is well-defined I can often freehand it well enough.

Nice finish! That's one I have in my stash to build someday. Yes, it should have a fabric finish for the passenger cockpit area, but regardless the model looks great. Any significant build issues with this one?

I'm glad they'll revisit the size of the metallic/pearl flakes. They are out of scale, also in the earlier line of factory-stock lacquer colors. I used "Artesian Turquoise" on a model and the metallic flakes were terribly out of scale. Nice to hear they're doing candy colors.

Noice! One of these days I'll build mine to match my 1:1 '96.

Ron, I like your car so well I had a look at my kit and wheel/tire stash. I'm leaning towards a "Bill Mitchell" combo of wire wheels and blackwalls; found a set of Fujimi 3-piece Borrani's that fit Monogram radials and if I use Cadillac crests instead of knockoffs, it looks pretty slick and reasonably "factory", and I can always add whitewalls. Seeing models like this doesn't help my modeler's ADD

Where in the world are you seeing March? The website very clearly says (copied and pasted from the page I linked to): "The Greenville & Spartanburg Chapters present the 6th Annual Upstate Model Contest Saturday, May 17, 2008 Simpsonville Activity & Senior Center 310 W. Curtis Street Simpsonville, SC"

How 'bout Simpsonville in May? I'm going to try to go to that one, and they've got some great builders up there and it's a good show. SCMA Contest page

Had a great time in Birmingham today! 240 models built by 52 different builders from 12 states and 12 model clubs. Birmingham Classic NNL 2008

This bus is 1/32 scale...I just looked at Fujimi's site and it's part of a series of these buses, and they are not 1/24. The item number on Fujimi's site has the same part number as HLJ, and it will be released on or around March 15. Hobbylink has it listed incorrectly in scale, and price. The real price is 6500 yen.

Sweet Came out really nice. Now that you have it done, does that give you the inspiration to knock out another one? Like a certain resin Ferrari? I find myself feeding off my last build...when I'm in a building mode, I tend to get a lot done. I've finished 5 in the past month after working on nothing from November thru January. Tomorrow I'm hitting the Birmingham NNL, I'll probably come home w/a lot more ideas than I'll ever have a chance to finish and hopefully not too many new projects too tempting to leave on a vendor table. And next weekend is Amelia Island...more dreaming

Thanks, the "lime yellow" color was mixed using Testors enamels; a bit of yellow, sublime green, a tiny amount of hot magenta (yes...), and white w/a few drops of black to get the color where it needed to be. Took a bit of eyeball engineering to get it right. Top/interior is a mixture of Tamiya acrylic flat green and buff, sealed with decanted Tamiya TS semigloss clear (new stuff, great stuff!).

This is the "Donk for a day" look for my newly restored Caprice I took an extra Caprice Chassis (with catalytic converter, oh my ) and fit the front suspension, wheels, tires from the Revell Escalade kit. It even sits "properly" for a Donk, nose-in-the-air for the "superior" look of a real mid-'70's Impala or Caprice-based Donk. After the show, the stock chassis/wheels/tires go back under it. I also fixed a few things; added interior mirror, chrome A pillar and front wheel opening moldings. In case you haven't seen the stock version: Stock Version

Thanks Ron, I had managed to miss that detail in the few reference photos I have! I'll take care of it tomorrow when I attempt to figure out a reasonable one-day-solution to the Donk category at B'ham. If I had a second '74 I'd definitely build the car your Mom had! That's a great looking Impala. Can't wait to see your take on it!

This one's about done...it might look a bit different at Birmingham on Saturday, aka "Donk for a day", but otherwise the stock variation is finished. This thing is like a '70's flaming disco ball Barcalounger Fun restoration, paint is Testors mixed to match Lime Yellow w/a medium green top/interior. Bumpers stripped and redone w/Spaz Stix chrome, looks pretty good. BMF is a PITA, even my new sheet has a bunch of cracks, but not as bad as my old sheet. Side mirror from parts box, MCCM plate from an old show. I may still do some headlight paint detail. In progress thread: Progress thread Finished pics: