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Hi all, Made the move to acrylics (Vallejo, Tamiya, etc...) some time back - due to ease of clean up and indoor use. It works well, for me, for my mecha and ma.k models. But not so much for realistic auto body finishes. It's a much less durable finish and I can't seem to manage the sanding/polishing - even with multiple well cured coats the least bit of sanding will quickly get you back to plastic. That's even with a clear coat and very fine sand paper. Without the sanding/polishing it dull at best. Has anyone been able to get a good factory shine using acrylics? Or should I go back to the enamels for that purpose? Thanks! Daf

Well after a long hiatus from building model cars I started building for fun again. I dug out a kit I started back I think in the summer of 1987... an AMT '61 Ford Falcon Ranchero. I bought my first airbrush then from a local discount / closeout chain called "Just Closeouts" It was a cheap knock off of a Badger 350. I prepped the paint which is Ditzler '68 Tahoe Turquoise my Dad had laying around. So I set up the airbrush and the adapter for the propellant broke, I went back to the store to get a replacement and the second one broke about 75% through the paint job. My Dad told me to take it back and get a refund and save up for a real one. So this model was shelved for about 27 years and I finally dug it out this fall and the paint to finish it.I have too many unfinished projects and I need to make the most of my time spent and finish something! I was over a friends house on Black Friday and brought the kit and the paint and finished with the base color coat after so many years and we still had hit a few bumps along the way, my friend while helping me spilled the first batch of thinned paint on his bench and then when I started spraying it was too think and cobwebbed the model. But I fixed the mix and kept on going. Now for the fun part. I have been doing a lot of modeling in other genre and I noticed that model cars look too clinically perfect and the colors look flat on the body. I know plane and armor builders pre-shade the models and some post shade. I experimented with some Games Workshop Acrylic washes called "Shades" on the dashboard and on one side of the model. I wanted the recesses to look deeper in scale. First off I did not use black. That would just kill the color on the body. I used a dark blue to accentuate the Tahoe Turquoise called Drachkenfeld Nightshade. It is a great almost Prussian blue color. I used it to great affect on my dashboard and onto one side of the car in the panel lines and the body sculpture. I showed this to a few of my club members and one mentioned that Mr Gustavan will be doing an article on this. well I will at least get this idea up here now! The concept is to make the scale model have more visual impact. We are seeing the model in 1 tot 1 scale and the model is 1/25. The light can't be shrunk down but a modeler can make details look deeper by adding a darker tone to the recesses. This will add more volume to the vehicle and make the details punch out. I have some pictures below on what I did. I also ditched the kits '70's era two piece plastic tires for the new AMT pad printed wide white front tires and wide white slicks for the back. I modified the chassis so the slicks could fit and lowered all four corners. I call it "T Boyding It" after Tim Boyd who has written so many model car builds over the year and always has been able to trim, tweak or hack up a kit to make just the right stance! I also dumped the Chevy and grabbed a proper Ford engine and I will be stuffing a 427 under the hood from an equally vintage '65 Ford Galaxie kit