Dave Z Posted January 23, 2019 Share Posted January 23, 2019 Hi All. I'm excited to be returning to the hobby I love after being away about 40 years...been busy with raising family, career, etc. Man, have things changed...FOR THE BETTER! I must say I'm somewhat intimidated by how great and detailed the modelers and their cars have become. In my day, if you bought a "hot knife" from Oscar Koveleski's Auto World and used it to cut out and hinge opening doors, hood & trunk, following Hank Borger's directions, you were cutting edge! I'm planning on returning to building muscle cars in 1/24 & 1/25 (maybe 1/16) scale from AMT & Revell. If I could impose on you, I need a refresher course on spray painting, as I was never very good at it. Can anyone layout the steps (in order) starting with the bare styrene body, such as # grit of sandpaper to prep body before priming, then after priming, color choice of primer & primer brand recommendations, type of spray paint (enamel or lacquer) from a can, brands, wet/dry sanding post-painting? Also, I see a lot about sanding sticks...can these be used to sand car bodies, or just small parts? How difficult is it to use Bare-Metal foil? Recommended glue for attaching windshields and rearview mirrors in-place? See, there's so many new specific products on the market since I was last involved, I just don't know how/where to start. Sorry to be so long here, would appreciate any help any of you can give me. Looking forward to making new friends here, sharing interests and having fun. Thank you Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jantrix Posted January 23, 2019 Share Posted January 23, 2019 Welcome back Dave. The returning modeler is something we see pretty frequently so don't worry about asking your questions. It's cool. I would recommend that you finsd the Q&A section of this forum and ask you questions individually. You are more likely to get more detailed answers. No matter what, don't get discouraged. Like most of us, you have learned that quality comes from practice. Don't keep on that first kit, painting over and over trying for good quality. Finish the model, try for better on the next one. It keeps things fresh and you motivated. See you around. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gijoe Posted January 23, 2019 Share Posted January 23, 2019 One of the members here has some great tutorials on his site called Italian Horses (I don't know the rules about linking that here). He has a tutorial for prep/primer, and one for color/finish. Those two tutorials will cover it. Anything not covered there should be easy to find on here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
El Roberto Posted January 23, 2019 Share Posted January 23, 2019 Or go to U Tube and look up painting model cars. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miatatom Posted January 24, 2019 Share Posted January 24, 2019 Welcome, Dave! Like you I took a long break. You have many questions and the best way to find that info is to spend about a billion hours on here reading. Seriously, you've found a great resource here with the forum. Here's how to get the most out of it by searching better. All the info to all the questions you have or will have are here in the forum. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tommrp Posted February 8, 2019 Share Posted February 8, 2019 On 1/23/2019 at 12:13 AM, Dave Z said: Hi All. I'm excited to be returning to the hobby I love after being away about 40 years...been busy with raising family, career, etc. Man, have things changed...FOR THE BETTER! I must say I'm somewhat intimidated by how great and detailed the modelers and their cars have become. In my day, if you bought a "hot knife" from Oscar Koveleski's Auto World and used it to cut out and hinge opening doors, hood & trunk, following Hank Borger's directions, you were cutting edge! I'm planning on returning to building muscle cars in 1/24 & 1/25 (maybe 1/16) scale from AMT & Revell. If I could impose on you, I need a refresher course on spray painting, as I was never very good at it. Can anyone layout the steps (in order) starting with the bare styrene body, such as # grit of sandpaper to prep body before priming, then after priming, color choice of primer & primer brand recommendations, type of spray paint (enamel or lacquer) from a can, brands, wet/dry sanding post-painting? Also, I see a lot about sanding sticks...can these be used to sand car bodies, or just small parts? How difficult is it to use Bare-Metal foil? Recommended glue for attaching windshields and rearview mirrors in-place? See, there's so many new specific products on the market since I was last involved, I just don't know how/where to start. Sorry to be so long here, would appreciate any help any of you can give me. Looking forward to making new friends here, sharing interests and having fun. Thank you Hi, Dave. Kind of like you, I came back to modeling very recently after many (many) years away. I actually picked up most of the current techniques etc. from Youtube videos, along with forums like this one. The whole painting process is of great interest to me but I've found that there are many opinions and not much consensus. Of course, I see fabulous results using different methods...so I'm thinking I'll try different approaches on different models and see what works for me. The best part is the investment in money is pretty small and the investment in time is (mostly) enjoyable. I say watch a lot of videos, read a bunch of forum posts, then just go for it and try what seems most appealing to you. As to some of your specific questions, you'll get about as many answers as there are model builders. Some go through the whole 600 thru 12,000 (or whatever) grit wet/dry sanding, others get nice results without any of that. I'm not disparaging any of that; I'm just saying there are lots of ways to do it. Some will work better for you than others. Read posts, watch videos, then just have fun trying things! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom Geiger Posted February 9, 2019 Share Posted February 9, 2019 Hello Dave! I see you are in New Jersey! We have a little club that meets monthly in Perth Amboy. Back when I returned to the hobby as an adult, some 30 years ago, I joined this club and my model skills grew exponentially! Everyone in a club is happy to help, answer your questions and demonstrate things for you. Surely the way to grow skills quickly! And have friends in the hobby as well! We meet the second Saturday of each month at 1pm. That's today! The meeting address and directions etc. are on our club website: https://www.tssmcc.com/ We hold our show in Wayne, NJ every April. We've been at this awhile, this is show 33! And we have a website for that too: https://www.nnleast.com/ Hope to meet you soon! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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