Final color coat..to smooth and perfect?

[69NovaYenko]

As usual, this past Saturday morning I was watching My Classic Car on Spike T.V. hosted by Dennis Gauge. Episode 8 of season 20 found Dennis visiting Rick Schmidt`s impressive car collection at National Parts headquarters in Ocala Florida. During the program Rick was showing a `60 Olds Super 88 that was in the collection. He was very proud of this beautiful four door because it was an original totally unrestored vehicle. During the conversation Dennis made the observation that the paint had a bite of orange peel. Ricks response was that’s how it came off the assembly line and he had no intent to fiddle with the cars original paint…or as he phrased it “patina”. Cars painted on the assembly line were on a tight production schedule and tight budget. He went on by essentially saying; that a custom, baby butt smooth, mirror like finish that was hand wet sanded several times was not how cars rolled off the assembly line back then. In fact I pretty certain they don`t do that today. 

So, here is my question. Do modelers who are trying to replicate certain vehicles futz to much over a models final color coat; repatly wet sanding with progressively finer and finer grits of wet/dry paper, in an attempt to get a mirror like baby smooth finish. After all, according to one of the countries prolific car collectors, that was not how they were finished  back in the day when they rolled out the factory door.  What are your thoughts on the matter?

Edited February 23, 2016 by 69NovaYenko

[Ace-Garageguy]

Well, it's like this. Orange peel on real-car paint comprises only a few thousandths of an inch variation between the tops and the troughs of the texture on the surface of the paint. To be scale correct for 1/25, you'd divide say, .005" by 25. That gives you .0002" (if you divide one inch into 10,000 parts, that would be just TWO of those parts). It's pretty unlikely you'll be able to see that without magnification.

Production cars from "back in the day", when photographed, appeared nicely glossy when new. I don't think you can see any indication of orange peel in these shots. Kinda the same effect as looking at a model.

                                                                      

Edited February 23, 2016 by Ace-Garageguy

[Aaronw]

Imperfect paint jobs on 1-1 cars allow me to sleep at night instead of stressing about my far from perfect paint jobs. I make the effort to do the best I can, but if I manage mirror smooth it was an accident. 

[ChrisBcritter]

I would imagine Cadillacs, Continentals and Imperials had more attention paid to fit and finish back then as opposed to your usual Corvair, Falcon or Valiant.  Occasionally a "special" customer would get preferential treatment. I've seen and ridden in Fred Astaire's '81 Imperial and that car was supposed to have been specially hand-rubbed at the factory to give it a deep smooth look (for sure it's the best I've seen on a malaise-era Imperial).

[DeeCee]

If your building "factory replication" stick with the orange peel, but i figure the factory paint was pretty ordinary, now days if i paid all those thousands of dollars for a paint job,

there is no way i would accept orange peel, the factory painted them to a tight budget.

All my builds are glossed to the max, as i like to build show quality style builds, but each to their own, there is no right way or wrong way,

IT'S ALL DOWN TO PERSONAL PREFERENCE..!!  ( and capabilities)..

[Mike Chernecki]

As usual, this past Saturday morning I was watching My Classic Car on Spike T.V. hosted by Dennis Gauge. Episode 8 of season 20

My Classic Car is still on TV? I haven't seen it here in Canada for a few years already, you sure it was on Spike, I have that channel but I don't see it.

[69NovaYenko]

My Classic Car is still on TV? I haven't seen it here in Canada for a few years already, you sure it was on Spike, I have that channel but I don't see it.

Yep, it`s still airing:  

2015 Season #19

http://www.myclassiccar.com/episode/19/  

2016 Season #20

http://www.myclassiccar.com/episode/20/

http://www.myclassiccar.com/

Edited February 23, 2016 by 69NovaYenko

[Exotics_Builder]

My Classic Car is still on TV? I haven't seen it here in Canada for a few years already, you sure it was on Spike, I have that channel but I don't see it.

It is on Velocity.

[Mike Chernecki]

It is on Velocity.

Thanks, of course Satellite Company moved that to a different tier package when Velocity came out. I now need to upgrade my dish and receiver to view channels on their second satellite. 

[Exotics_Builder]

Thanks, of course Satellite Company moved that to a different tier package when Velocity came out. I now need to upgrade my dish and receiver to view channels on their second satellite. 

Sadly, they all play games to squeak more money out of us. 

[69NovaYenko]

Don't let my question mislead anyone. I`m not advocating that one should forgo wet sanding. The comment made by this prolific auto curator prompted me to pause for thought. Just wanted to know how others viewed the question.

Edited February 23, 2016 by 69NovaYenko

[Dann Tier]

IMO, on the flip-side of "orange peel" paint, there IS such a thing as "out of scale"  too glossy paint jobs. In these builds, vents, seams, and edges lose they're distinction. It gives the look as if the body was dipped into a bucket of paint and hung to dry. When I build, I try to imagine what the paint would look like if I was standing right next to it at that  scale. So many show winning paint jobs are FAR from realistic. The seams, vents, and especially A-pillars would be HUGE and CHUNKY if we scaled ourselves down to these.

[Snake45]

Yenko, you're onto something here. I discovered the same thing five or six years ago and have been working on it.

Believe it or not, it's actually MUCH easier to get a perfect, flawless, high-gloss finish on a model car than a paint job that actually looks like a real factory finish.

Best I've been able to do is lay down the paint with at least the last few coats cut with naphtha, which flows out to about a 95% shiny job but still dries in a reasonable time, and then either leave it alone or do no more than a very light polish.

Even if you "hit it," someone looking at your model will have to appreciate what you were going for, or he's gonna say, "I think you coulda polished that out a littlie shinier."

[Mike Chernecki]

I think some people confuse what they call "out of scale" too glossy paint job with lost edges and detail, with poorly applied paint that is too thick. I believe a highly polished smooth paint is more realistic, magnify that paint 25x and you will see flaws and orange peel which more closely resembles 1:1 paint. Now look at it another way, you don't polish your paint because you want that realistic "orange peel", now take this surface and magnify it 25x and you will have a 1:1 paint job that has paint so thick and a surface so irregular that it looks like mud thrown at the paint. 

[Ace-Garageguy]

IMO, on the flip-side of "orange peel" paint, there IS such a thing as "out of scale"  too glossy paint jobs. In these builds, vents, seams, and edges lose they're distinction. It gives the look as if the body was dipped into a bucket of paint and hung to dry. When I build, I try to imagine what the paint would look like if I was standing right next to it at that  scale. So many show winning paint jobs are FAR from realistic. The seams, vents, and especially A-pillars would be HUGE and CHUNKY if we scaled ourselves down to these.

But the issue here isn't "too glossy". It's too-thick, where the seams weren't scribed often enough, and the material was allowed to form a meniscus (meniscus:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meniscus  )  at the edges of panel lines that wasn't dealt with correctly. I've been guilty of this one myself, but if you look at the work of modelers who get-it, a high gloss looks very real.

This model is by Marcos Cruz. Compare the gloss to the real cars in the second post.

 

 

Edited February 23, 2016 by Ace-Garageguy

[Pete J.]

I have to agree with most of what is said before me about "scale finishes".  Yes, I remember having a broken side mirror on my 72 240Z about a year after it was new.  I bought a new one and had a cheap badger airbrush at the time and I sprayed it with factory paint and was really pleased with myself in that I got the same orange peel finish that my car had.  Having said that if you go to a showroom today you will not find the orange peel that the older cars had because they use an electrostatic painting method now that gives a very nice finish, so newer car models should have a very smooth and glossy finish. 

Having said that, it now comes down to scale.  Several people have mentioned the fact that as you scale the finish down, the imperfections scale down as well and at some point become invisible to the naked eye.  When I am judging at a contest I rarely get my eyes any closer that 8" to 12".  If you scale that up to 1:24 scale that means in a 1:1  I would be viewing the car from 16 to 24 feet away.  If you think about what imperfections you would see in the real deal at that distance, you will realize that you would probably not see any of the standard imperfections.  Thus a "Perfect paint job". 

Now, for the other side.  The "honey dipped" models.  I see far too many models on the table with paint that is way too thick and it destroys the surface detail.  This is not a perfect paint job and although it is very glossy, it doesn't look right.  That "right look" is really what we all should strive for.  Something that to the eye looks like the real deal shrunk down to a scale model.  That raises several points.  The first one is that surface detail such as panel lines, logos, and other trim pieces should have sharp crisp detail.  Too much paint dulls all of these, especially panel lines.  The edge of each side of a panel line should be crisp and sharp because at scale distance that is what they look like.  Yes, close up they are generally rounded sheet metal, but that is not what you see at 16' to 24'.  One of the issues with paint on models is that it tends to bead up at the edges.  The only way to get truly crisp panel lines is to sand them flat with a good sanding stick.  This is difficult because it is easy to sand through the paint but it is something the best modeler have the skill to do. 

While on the subject of panel lines, at scale distance, panel lines will be very distinctive because of the shadows.  By the time you get a model together, the panel lines are so shallow that you get almost no shadow effect at all. There for to make them "look" right they should be darkened.  Notice I said darkened.  I have seen modeler who will use a rapidograph pen to black out the lines and they look way to dark.  Personally, I prefer to pre shade  the lines.  This is a process that I spray all the lines with black and then sand away the overspray from the body so that only the panel line show black.  This is done before you spray the color and clear if you use that. You should then spray the color as thin as you can and still cover the body evenly.  The panel lines with show though as darker, especially if you are using red, yellow or white.  Then clear over that with just enough paint to allow you to sand it out without cutting through. 

The most important part of painting models is to use the minimum amount of paint and sand everything level before you polish it out. 

That is my story, and I am sticking to it.

[Ace-Garageguy]

To further illustrate the panel-line thing, here's one of mine. Nice glossy paint, but my panel-lines look like carp. Compare this to the work Mr. Cruz did on the beautiful red  '53 Ford above. He did it right. I didn't. Small thing that makes a HUGE difference.

 

[StevenGuthmiller]

I've never been an "orange peel" advocate either.

Most orange peel just looks way out of scale on a 1/25th kit & looks more like a lumpy paint job than a factory finish.

I think if you're looking for a factory finish, just a bit less polishing will give a better affect than the bumps.

In my opinion, it's pretty hard to get a paint job too shiny.

But being a "stock" builder, I usually try not to go over board with the polishing.

As far as panel lines go, Just a wash of acrylic craft paint in a slightly darker shade of the body color always looked fine to me.

& it's so easy to do!

 

Steve

[Aaronw]

From my perspective it isn't a matter of too smooth, but it is possible to be too glossy though and that is not including the honey dipped look.

Some people do a very good job of replicating a factory look, others come across looking more like a custom, the paint is "too nice". This seems to be a matter of technique rather than a lack of skill and a lot of people like that perfect paint job look even if it isn't 100% accurate for a factory car.

 

Sorry I can't provide examples as I don't have the ability to do either (I'm the scale equivalent to Earl Scheib, I'll paint that car for $0.7995), but I do know it when I see it on a model.

 

 

Edited February 23, 2016 by Aaronw

[Pete J.]

I've never been an "orange peel" advocate either.

Most orange peel just looks way out of scale on a 1/25th kit & looks more like a lumpy paint job than a factory finish.

I think if you're looking for a factory finish, just a bit less polishing will give a better affect than the bumps.

In my opinion, it's pretty hard to get a paint job too shiny.

But being a "stock" builder, I usually try not to go over board with the polishing.

As far as panel lines go, Just a wash of acrylic craft paint in a slightly darker shade of the body color always looked fine to me.

& it's so easy to do!

 

Steve

There are a lot of ways to add shadows to the panel lines and other parts.  This is also a good one. 

[Dragline]

It matters to those who are after 100% orig. I don't build [rarely] factory stock. But when I do I go for a factory finish. I'm currently building a 1/9 BMW R-75 WWII bike w/sidecar. I'm going after patina a bit but am using gloss paint that's thinned a bit though my airbrush. It comes out not quite flat but seriously semi-gloss. is it correct? After looking at period pictures and restored bikes it becomes hard to tell.

 

After I'm finished and it's weathered you can decide for yourself. My WIP goes up Thurs morning in the "All The Rest" category.

 

 

But for me the correct paint makes a build come to life.