Revell '68 Corvette Roadster 2'n1

[Justin Dodson]

Hello all! This is one of my first model car builds in a while, mainly because school is out and summer is here. So now I have more time to grow my skills in this wonderful hobby. 

Here it is so far, I'm still working on the chassis and little things here and there. I decided to make this a sleek and custom Corvette. I want to use the taillight pieces below, which may look like they are from a Corvette, but no. They are from a '58 Ford Thunderbird. A custom spice! 

 

This is the first model car I've done with a flat-color interior. All of my previous builds have gloss black interiors, which I will admit is not very realistic. 

That's all the pictures I have for now. I will gladly post more in this thread as I progress through this build. 

Thanks for viewing!

 

[PARTSMARTY]

This will ,look cool.I use satin or flat for interiors-never gloss.

[Justin Dodson]

Yeah I will definitely be using flat colors for interiors from now on.

Here's some more progress. I acquired some spray paint for the body.

I always get the underside painted before I paint the side that viewers would see. Also, this is my first time using a wire coat hanger to hold the body for painting.

First coat is done on the underside of the body, hood and roof. I might do only one coat on the underside, or I might do more. I'm thinking on it.

Well, that's some progress. I'm hoping tomorrow there will be more painting-appropriate weather outside. I guess time will tell

[crazyjim]

If you rub your finger on the outside of your nose and then rub the flat interior, it will magically appear to be leather.

[BigTallDad]

3 hours ago, Justin Dodson said:

 

First coat is done on the underside of the body, hood and roof. I might do only one coat on the underside, or I might do more. I'm thinking on it.

Well, that's some progress. I'm hoping tomorrow there will be more painting-appropriate weather outside. I guess time will tell

I'm surprised you don't clean up the ejector pin marks

Edited July 9, 2018 by BigTallDad

[Snake45]

12 minutes ago, BigTallDad said:

I'm surprised you don't clean up the ejector pin marks

I wouldn't bother with those either, but I absolutely cannot stand parting lines or edge flash anywhere on the outside of the body. 

[spencer1984]

Looking good so far, I like the choice of colors!

[THORDOOR220]

Corvette with T-Bird taillights, huh? That should be an interesting touch. Looking forward to see how it turns out. Nice color choice by the way.

[Justin Dodson]

10 hours ago, THORDOOR220 said:

Corvette with T-Bird taillights, huh? That should be an interesting touch. Looking forward to see how it turns out. Nice color choice by the way.

Thank you! Yeah I can barely wait to see how those taillights turn out. 

11 hours ago, spencer1984 said:

Looking good so far, I like the choice of colors!

Thank you! I felt that there are lots of red Corvettes out there, which does look great, but I felt that I should make one in blue. 

14 hours ago, Snake45 said:

I wouldn't bother with those either, but I absolutely cannot stand parting lines or edge flash anywhere on the outside of the body. 

I agree. Feel free to point out any of errors I overlook. Don't worry I will not be offended 

[Justin Dodson]

16 hours ago, crazyjim said:

If you rub your finger on the outside of your nose and then rub the flat interior, it will magically appear to be leather.

I can't tell if you're joking or not. If I try that out then it will be on a piece of scrap plastic lol 

[crazyjim]

No joke.  It really works.  Something about natural body oils.  Gives a GREAT effect on vinyl tops.

[Justin Dodson]

10 hours ago, crazyjim said:

No joke.  It really works.  Something about natural body oils.  Gives a GREAT effect on vinyl tops.

Wow, okay. I guess I'll have to give that a try some time.

Also, I have heard that rubbing wet sandpaper with toothpaste works well for removing orange peel on body parts. Below are some pieces that have orange peel, and then some toothpaste I recently acquired... (sorry for the blurriness)

Can someone confirm if that method is alright for eliminating orange peel (also some "fish eyes")?

Thanks!

 

Edited July 11, 2018 by Justin Dodson
Accidentally had a duplicate pic in there

[dragmodels44]

Fish eyes are from contaminants on the surface when you painted. You’d probably have to sand them down smooth and repaint them, depending how deep they are. Color looks great though.

[THORDOOR220]

Color looks very good. I have heard the leather trick as well, though I have yet to test it. I will be using it with my current impala model. I haven't used toothpaste, haven't heard of that one before. I have some really good rubbing compound I usually use, left over from when I painted my foxbody a few years back (actual car, not model). I'll be finding more soon, since I have a nova to paint soon. Let me know how toothpaste works, if you try it. Might be cheaper than my expensive real-car stuff

[Snaker]

I absolutely love this build so far! I remember building this as my first kit. I painted it yellow with the blower option. To bad I lost it years ago. 

[crazyjim]

Sandpaper has grit. Toothpaste has grit.  So using both is a double whammy.  Try one of the polishing systems out there which start at 2500 grit and in 6 steps goes up to 12000 grit.  Then use something like Novus #2 to remove any marks, following a coat on The Treatment Model Car Wax.  Don't forget a small squirt of Dawn in you water for  better sandpaper lubrication.

[Justin Dodson]

10 hours ago, Snaker said:

I absolutely love this build so far! I remember building this as my first kit. I painted it yellow with the blower option. To bad I lost it years ago. 

Thanks! Yeah I was considering putting the blower on, but I decided to save it for a different car.   

12 hours ago, dragmodels44 said:

Fish eyes are from contaminants on the surface when you painted. You’d probably have to sand them down smooth and repaint them, depending how deep they are. Color looks great though.

Oh okay, I didn't know it was contaminants. I thought it was something involving the paint coming out of the nozzle. 

Thanks everyone for all this helpful advice! I declare this forum my go-to place for getting help on my model car builds lol!

 

[Can-Con]

You certainly can use toothpaste to polish out a model. I used to do it all the time back in the '80s.  , , and I do mean "all the time" it used to take days to polish out a model with the stuff. 

If you don't think your time is worth much you can go that way.

Now I use a set of micro mesh polishing cloths and Tamiya polishing compound. Takes a few hours to polish out a model with this.  I't gonna cost you about what you'd pay for a model to buy the stuff but you can do at least a 1/2 dozen cars with it. 

Put it this way ,, would you rather cut a tree down with a steak knife or a power saw? 

[Snake45]

I don't know if that type of toothpaste will polish paint or not--some will, some just make things even worse--but it looks to me like your orange peel is so severe that polishing isn't going to smooth it out, it's just going to make shiny orange peel. I can tell you this because I've recently trying polishing two or three OP projects that looked very similar to yours. Two of them couldn't be fixed and I had to strip the paint and start over.

I think at this point your best bet would be to lay on two or three coats of a good clear coat, let that dry, wet-sand the clear smooth, and THEN you can start polishing.

Polishing severe orange peel just gets you shiny orange peel.

[Justin Dodson]

52 minutes ago, Can-Con said:

You certainly can use toothpaste to polish out a model. I used to do it all the time back in the '80s.  , , and I do mean "all the time" it used to take days to polish out a model with the stuff. 

If you don't think your time is worth much you can go that way.

Now I use a set of micro mesh polishing cloths and Tamiya polishing compound. Takes a few hours to polish out a model with this.  I't gonna cost you about what you'd pay for a model to buy the stuff but you can do at least a 1/2 dozen cars with it. 

Put it this way ,, would you rather cut a tree down with a steak knife or a power saw? 

Ah-ha, I like that analogy. Thanks for the reference to the Tamiya polishing compound.

22 minutes ago, Snake45 said:

I don't know if that type of toothpaste will polish paint or not--some will, some just make things even worse--but it looks to me like your orange peel is so severe that polishing isn't going to smooth it out, it's just going to make shiny orange peel. I can tell you this because I've recently trying polishing two or three OP projects that looked very similar to yours. Two of them couldn't be fixed and I had to strip the paint and start over.

I think at this point your best bet would be to lay on two or three coats of a good clear coat, let that dry, wet-sand the clear smooth, and THEN you can start polishing.

Polishing severe orange peel just gets you shiny orange peel.

Alrighty. I also just realized something, I think my main problem was I wasn't always spraying vertically. The top side of the body was being sprayed with the can horizontally. I guess I should just position each part so the current surface will be sprayed with the can upright?

[THORDOOR220]

I would. It isn't always possible, but if you can spray at an angle 45 degrees or less, it should be good enough. I usually spray a body on each side (front, back, and sides) and try to get the top of the model while doing those, kind of like halves. Obviously you won't always get the roof spraying from the front, but you usually can from the sides without tilting your airbrush/spray can too awful much. It should be enough to keep the paint even. For spray paint, I've also heard of people heating the can in warm water for a bit, and then the typical shaking afterwards. They claim it helps spray more evenly, though I haven't tried it myself so I can't confirm it.

[Rat Roaster]

Well, i was messing around with a few examples of this kit (1968 L/88) today and then just found this thread.

While looking at mine it became apparent that the body was designed for optional 1969 side exhausts because the tail panel has no cutouts for the 1968 exhaust tips. I didn't look at the instructions but i did see treed chromed tailpipe extensions and also chromed semi-circular bezels that go into the tail panel for the exhaust tips.

So i looked at the box art model and sure enough, there were no cutouts in that tail panel and no tailpipe extensions. The exhaust system on the box art model dead-ended without poking through the tail panel like it should have. My Revell 1968 Corvettes all DID have the correct 1968 backup lights below the bumper, though. Backup lights that were moved to the red lenses for 1969.

 

 

 

Edited July 14, 2018 by Rat Roaster

[Justin Dodson]

On 7/13/2018 at 10:52 PM, THORDOOR220 said:

I would. It isn't always possible, but if you can spray at an angle 45 degrees or less, it should be good enough. I usually spray a body on each side (front, back, and sides) and try to get the top of the model while doing those, kind of like halves. Obviously you won't always get the roof spraying from the front, but you usually can from the sides without tilting your airbrush/spray can too awful much. It should be enough to keep the paint even. For spray paint, I've also heard of people heating the can in warm water for a bit, and then the typical shaking afterwards. They claim it helps spray more evenly, though I haven't tried it myself so I can't confirm it.

Yeah I've heard of that too, but I actually just leave it out in the sun for like 10 minutes, but no more. That way it won't get wet. 

On 7/13/2018 at 11:13 PM, Rat Roaster said:

Well, i was messing around with a few examples of this kit (1968 L/88) today and then just found this thread.

While looking at mine it became apparent that the body was designed for optional 1969 side exhausts because the tail panel has no cutouts for the 1968 exhaust tips. I didn't look at the instructions but i did see treed chromed tailpipe extensions and also chromed semi-circular bezels that go into the tail panel for the exhaust tips.

So i looked at the box art model and sure enough, there were no cutouts in that tail panel and no tailpipe extensions. The exhaust system on the box art model dead-ended without poking through the tail panel like it should have. My Revell 1968 Corvettes all DID have the correct 1968 backup lights below the bumper, though. Backup lights that were moved to the red lenses for 1969.

 

 

 

I must bring to your attention that in the instructions, there is a step that says to cut out 2 circles for the exhaust tips. The circles are there, the plastic of the circles are just more thin than the rest of that panel. I couldn't tell if you already knew about this, but I figured if you did it still might help someone else that was confused.

[Rat Roaster]

Well then, you looked at the instructions so you would know. You may want to consider buzzing that thinned area out before final paint in order to avoid chipping the paint while buzzing it out. Carry on!

[Justin Dodson]

Hey guys. Sorry for the lack of progress these past couple days, I had some surgery. I'm currently recovering. I did acquire something though, it's called "Scratch Out". I found out about it in a YouTube video involving fixing orange peel. Anyway, I tried it and it does work, but I still think I will need to repaint the main body piece.