A pair of 66 Novas- small update for now on the wagon

[microwheel]

Never to old to learn new stuff thanks for sharing these two models look great so far

Thanks John, I totally agree I lean something everyday, and I'm sure not gettin any younger lol

[microwheel]

Outstanding interior work. So you add your foil first. Great way to do it...

Why thank ya kindly Carl.

Yuppers most times for my interiors I do my foil work first. Darn I let one of my little secrets out. Ok so now for the dirty part of the secret lol, this doesnt work so well if you use a primer over the foiled parts.. Creats to much of a layer for the tooth pick in thinner process to cut through. So if I intend to use a paint that needs a primer barrier between the paint and plastic, I primer first then foil and then paint. The draw back to that is the ultra fine orange peel that even the finest primer creats really stands out when the ultra thin foil is applied on top of it. But it still looks better than it does laying the foil over the finished paint. I think the process speaks for itself. There are those times where there is no choice and the foil has to go on last. Ya just have to plan things out and know when and where and what is best for the job at hand.

[microwheel]

Another little tip for my interiors that I forgot to mention during the interior write up posts above, is when it comes to giving you seats that vinyl look, for me, I use either a semi-gloss paint or flat colored paint and once the seats are painted and dried, I give them a quick wipe down with Mothers VLR vinyl-leather-rubber conditioner. Same stuff you would use on a real car and can be bought almost anywhere. I had bought some a while back to clean the seats on my MG midget and while sitting in my hobby room one day, decided to see what would happen with it, I grabbed a old model seat from the parts bin, painted it a flat blue and then wiped it with a little of the VLR. I been sold on it ever since.

[microwheel]

Well guys, I decided to start my write up tonight on how I detail my dashs. I may not get it all posted tonight, but I'll try to get a little ways with it. What I don't get posted this evening, I will try to get posted in the morning.

It will take more than one post, so hang in there with me.

One of the first things I do before working on my dash, is the planning stage. If I end up using a MCG detail kit for a project (as I am with this one), I look the detail kit over to see what photo-etched parts may be included for the dash. This is important. Photo-etched parts don't look their best if glued over exsisting molded on detail.

After I look the MCG kit over I decide what molded on detail needs to be removed or modified so the photo-etched parts will look their best.

For this project, the glove box script needs to be removed and the glove box key lock needs to be removed and indented. Also the ignition key area needs a little modifying.

Starting with the glove box emblem, It will get shaved off using the exacto blade you see in the pic below. It's about the only thing I use this kind of blade for. But it allows you to nudge the blade sideways against the grain of the script and gently scrape it off.

Once the script has been scraped off I go over the area with 600 grit sand papper to remove any left over scrape marks. This gives me a nice clean surface for the photo etched script to be applied to later.

Next up I drill a hole through the center of the ingnition switch being careful not to drill out the outer edges of it. I want the raised area, so my goal here to to leave a ring of the molded on detail. Drilling the hole in the center, leaves me the option later to add the photo etched keys to the ignition if I decide to.

Next I needed to indent the hole so the photo etched ignition switch key fob would sit in it flush. I did this by just lightly twisting a larger drill bit in the hole I made earlier. At this point I also removed the molded on glove box lock and indented the area with the same larger bit as well. This is so the photo etched glove box key lock would sit propperly.

Next I applied BMF foil to the dash knobs and heater control areas. using the same process I did on the interior trim earlier. Making sure the dash was washed good and then wiped down with rubbing alcohol before doing my foil work.

Now at this point, I will be foiling over the radio but it will be removed later and re-foiled, after the dash has been painted. So think of it as a tight mask. It would be to large of a surface area to try to clean all the paint off. I experimented one the first dash for the wagon and found if I tried to clean all the paint off the radio area, the only thing that would come close to working was a q-tip dipped in denatured alcohol and it made a mess of the paint surrounding the radio, and I had to redo the hole dash afterwords, so lesson learned. This is the best way I found for it to work.

More of this process coming in my next post.....

[microwheel]

At this point the dash is ready for painting.

I gave the entire dash a couple of light coats of Model Masters flat black lacquer.

Once the flat black dried, the knob and heater contols got cleaned off with a tooth pic dipped in denatured alcohol. They will get painted over again, but cleaning them now saves on too many coats of paint building up on them and making it harder to clean them off.

Next the center of the dash was masked off using tamiya thin strip masking tape and the rest of the dash was sprayed with tamiya gloss black lacquer.

The reason for the different shades of black is to give the dash a more realistic look in the car. The bottom of the dash was metal, so I wanted to reflect that with the gloss black paint. I want the glove box and instrament area flat black and the dash pad top semi-gloss black

Once the gloss black dried, everything except the top of the dash was masked off and the top of the dash was painted with tamiya semi-gloss black

Once the last paint had dried to the touch all the masking was removed.

Continued in the next post

[microwheel]

Once the dash was unmasked the dash knobs and heater area was again cleaned off using a tooth pic dipped in denatured alcohol. Once that was done the original BMF was removed from the radio face.

Now it was time to add new BMF to the radio face. I cut a piece of BMF and placed it loosely on the radio face.

Using a q-tip I gently pressed the foil down onto the face of the radio, staring in the center and working my way out to each side, but stopping at the knobs so the foil would not tear around them. I then, gently worked a tooth pic around the detail of the radio face starting in the center and worked my way out around the knobs, making several passes so as not to press to hard as I was working with the tooth pic.

Once the foil was pressed down fairly tight, the excess was trimmed away with an exacto knife and a light wash of tamiya flat aluminum was applied to the radio face plate.

Next post will be about detailing out the dash with gauges and photo etched pieces. But that will have to wait till morning.. It's been a long day and the sandman is calling my name again. I hope you all are finding these extentsive write ups usefull. It takes me quite some time to write them up and also the added build time to stop during the build process and take pics for them. So if I'm posting to much here please let me know so I can adjust how often and how much I post.

[tyrone]

really nice job... I love your building style...

[microwheel]

really nice job... I love your building style...

Thanks aot Tyrone

[microwheel]

Morning everyone.

Time to get back to finishing the write up on the dash.

Now that the dash it painted and the BMF foil work is taken care of, it's time to work on the dash detailing. For this I used the guage faces from http://bestmodelcarparts.com and the dash Super Sport glove box script as well as two of the key fobs from the MCG photo etched detail kit (the other two in the kit are for the outer door locks).

The only thing on the 66 nova gauge faces I plan to use is the instrament gauges, I wont be using the printed heater contol or radio face. Mostly because I chose to BMF the heater controls and I only want the dial area face for the radio. So I dug in my spare aftermarket parts bin and found just a radio dial face that will work just fine for what I want. It's from a 67 corvette guage face set that I didn't use. (this is where saving leftover stuff from previous builds comes in handy lol)

I cut out the radio face with my exacto knife and used gloss clear lacquer to glue it into place. (I'll clean the flat aluminum paint off from around the radio face later after the final detail is done, that area should be chrome anyways).

I then cut the instrament gauge face out with my exacto knife and fixed it into place.

Next I cut two of the four key fobs, the brake and clutch pedal script and the Super Sport script loose from the MCG detail kit with my exacto knife, (you can use photo etched cutters if you have them). I usually place the photo etched kit on a wide piece of tamiya masking tape, since it is a low stick tape. Doing this helps keep from loosing tiny photo etched parts as I cut them loose, hence I prefer to use a exacto knife to cut them loose with. I also place the kit in a four sided cardboard box lid so if a tiny photo etched part does go flying, when I cut it loose, I have a better chance of keeping it local enough to find it again. I then tacked these parts onto there respective places on the dash.

And that pretty much completed the dash detailing. I may add the photo etched key set as I did on the wagon dash (haven's decided yet)

I'll post a few final shots of the completed dash in the following post.....

[mustang1989]

Neat idea on the usage of that BMF Jim!! I'll be writing that one down!

[microwheel]

Here are a few more pics of the completed dash.

About all I got left to do for the interior, is to paint and detail the steering column and wheel, and make and add the seatbelts, then the interior pieces can be assebled.

More to come as I get things done. Thanks for looking and all comments and suggestions are welcome.

[microwheel]

Neat idea on the usage of that BMF Jim!! I'll be writing that one down!

Thanks Joe, I've always had pretty good luck with doing it this way.

[taaron76]

Great stuff, Jim. Excellent writeup! I will be incorporating some of these techniques into future builds, for sure.

Tim

[taaron76]

I suppose you could lay your primer down on the interior, then BMF? I never really thought about not priming the interior in order to keep the details really clean in the dash, seats and the door panels. Primer and paint seem to fill up those details pretty quick.

Tim

[microwheel]

I suppose you could lay your primer down on the interior, then BMF? I never really thought about not priming the interior in order to keep the details really clean in the dash, seats and the door panels. Primer and paint seem to fill up those details pretty quick.

Tim

Yup Tim, you could primer over the parts and then BMF, but primer, unless you sand it really smooth, does leave a slight bit of Orange Peel and because of how thin BMF is, the orange peel will show through it, and being so shiny as it is, the orange peel will really stand out and make the BMF look wrinkled. That's why I very seldom primer interior parts. If you use mostly flat or semi-gloss model paints, there is very seldom a real need for primer. When I did the one front seat, you notice I even used a little filler to fix a imperfection, and I didn't use one drop of primer over it, because I used a non-gloss paint, it covered it just fine.

[Dogfish_7]

Truely amazing to watch! Never have seen anyone explain how to do it right, as well as you have.

Thank you!

[microwheel]

Truely amazing to watch! Never have seen anyone explain how to do it right, as well as you have.

Thank you!

Well thank you kindly Bruce. If eplaining things like I do helps someone else with their build, then I've done my job, lol. I had lots of help when I first started out, and I'm greatful to everyone who did and those that I still learn from.

I have the interior assembly for Pop's toy almost complete, just waiting for a few things to dry so I can do a tad bit of touch up on it, then maybe later tonight or tomorrow morning I will post some completed pics of the interior.

[microwheel]

Well finally got the interior for the Nova SS done today. Here is a few pics of the completed interior.

Sorry about some of the lighting. Now that the interiors for both Novas are done I can finally move on to other parts of the models.

I'll post More as I get things done. Thanks for looking. Feedback is always welcome.

Edited May 1, 2015 by microwheel

[slusher]

Thanks so much Jim i really need these tips. Your so good at detail..

[taaron76]

Incredible!

Tim

[66belair]

Totally amazing work. Your patience level nuag be sky high. I do good to get a couple of box stock kits done a year. Your interiors are models within a model.

[microwheel]

Incredible!

Tim

Thanks alot Tim my friend.

[microwheel]

Thanks so much Jim i really need these tips. Your so good at detail..

Why thank you Carl. I'm glad I can contribute back to anyone in the hobby. When I first started out there were alot of good folks who guided me along and helped me. I just hope I can do the same for others.

Totally amazing work. Your patience level nuag be sky high. I do good to get a couple of box stock kits done a year. Your interiors are models within a model.

Thank you very much Mike. That's exactly how I aproach my projects. I brake them down into sub assemblies and treat each assembly as a seperate model. Kinda like the guys who build dioramas, build each thing as a model but plan it out so you can tie it all together. By doing that and not allowing my brain to focus to much on the entire model, I'm able to give each section of the entire model more attention.

[Stray]

Really nice step-by-steps Jim. Thanks for posting it and taking the effort.

Like everyone else has said, your interiors are on point as always! Inspiration.

[TFchronos]

Wow, the level of detail and quality of your builds never ceases to amaze me.

Beautiful work on both of these cars.