EvilCarrot

You might wanna give this a try too. It's a glue that dries nice and clear under UV light. I've glued two canopies with it so far, very strong connection! I've tested it on a piece of plastic like in the video. It stayed clear after drying but it wasn't entirely solid and felt a bit rubbery. Sanding and polishing seem to be out of the question but I think it would work nicely for IP glasses.

Hey, cool build David, you did a great job! Funny, I'm building one too atm, Was thinking about whether or not I'd put it up here when it's done. @Kev, it's definitely a fun little build, Bandai did a great job updating the old Tsukada kit into a better fitting, more accurate Möwe, not too expensive either. I'd say go for it! @Vandy, Nausicaa is a must see! I also recommend everyone who likes the film to read the manga. Very similar to the movie at first but after the first volume it branches off to a much more elaborate story.

It was kinda weird reading this thread without checking the dates. Here I was about to tell you NOT to do it (just for the fun of it ) Nice and shiny build, though!

I like any of these styles as long as it's more or less realistic and/or nice to look at. It may sound strange but I think a "factory built" model can be even harder to do right than a weathered one. Every little mistake, every dust particle that gets in the paint stands out like Steven Tyler at a beauty contest so I really admire those who are able to get that perfect finish.

Just got myself a 2nd hand H&S Evolution Silverline 2 in 1 for a really good price. It's only been used once but the previous owner clearly never heard about cleaning an airbrush, dry paint all the way to the back of the needle! Luckily it was just acrylic paint so after about an hour of cleaning it's good as new! It was indeed very easy to take apart and put back together, you can see this is a quality tool and it looks to be a definite step up from my Badger 100 LG. Can hardly wait to try it out!

Woah, Peter, If I ever become religious again you can be my new god, respect!

Welcome Bill, I'm fairly new here too but I'm quite sure you'll have a great time here. Lot's of friendly helpful people on these boards! @DannyVM: Dendermonde? I work there, lol, you basically live next door to me!

That's one heck of an expensive microwave!

I think we have a winner! Such enthousiasm, you're like the Adam Savage of the LSP forums.

1) 133 kits according to scalemates, but there's a lot of stuff (mostly gundam/sci-fi kits) I still have to add. So I think I'm between 150 and 180 kits. 25 of those are LSP's 2) Why not? Multiple reasons actually: I like to have a lot of choice, looking at the kits get's me excited to build them, I can't say no to a good deal, I WANT MORE STUFF!, ... 3) Interesting subject and/or interesting kit and the desire to actually build it. I've grown a lot more selective recently. Mostly looking for kits that go together without to much fuss or need for aftermarket stuff. I just wanna have fun building them! I'm mostly doing 'skill-building' kits right now. I pick my next one based on what I feel like building, sometimes it's easy, sometimes I can't make up my mind, sometimes I change my mind after I've already started. (Hello shelf of doom, here's another one. ) 4) Always on the lookout for deals. If I had payed full price for every kit I own I'd probably be having serious financial problems... (HK B-17 comes to mind) 5) Depends... Since my return to modeling, none as of yet but one is nearing completion. Other than that I have about 10 finished kits from "the earlier days". Having so many kits is kind of a double edged sword though. It's nice to have a big selection but there's so many kits I really want to build! I'm now forcing myself to finish something before I start something new, we'll see where that goes. @Shoggz: Something tells me you like spitfires

Anyone know if they're still in business? They were taken over by somebody in the UK if I'm correct but it's been 10 months since their website was last updated. I have the old Revell DR.I in the stash and I was hoping they'd do a rerelease of their aftermarket for that one, especially the spandau guns...

Nice stash! Also nice to see how "helpful" everyone is. I'll "help you" with one of those A-10's if you'd like. I'm also somewhere between 150 and 200 kits, I think. Most of them are stored in my garage so the wife doesn't see them very often. It's best to avoid confrontation. Maybe you can cover them up with an old bedsheet? To make room for more kits?

I've been thinking about making some of that "molten plastic putty" with tamiya cement as a solvent. What plastic/cement ratio do you guys use?

The model Master stuff looks great but I think it's hard to come by in Belgium. Not that many hobby shops here anymore and they don't stock every brand. I think it's mostly Revell, Humbrol, Gunze Aqueous, Vallejo and Alclad. What about the Alclad clears, are they any good?

It looks like I might actually finish a kit for the first time in many years! Yay! It's not an LS yet but at least it's a P. I'm at the stage where I'm about to gloss coat the whole thing to get it ready for decaling. Now I've seen a lot of varied opinions on Future (or Klear or whatever it's called these days) some swear by it and use it for pretty much everything, others seem to consider it the new F-word (which is technically also swearing... ) So my question, should I use it as a gloss coat and why or why not? If not, what are your preferred alternatives?

The panel lines of that Sea Fury look fantastic but it seams (pun intended) to me that they were scribed into a very thick coat. How thickly would you need to put on your coat of primer to get that effect?

@Peter: the ones they ship out now have neither cracks nor blemishes, I've read about people getting a second replacement without problems so if you want to give it a try you might be able to get a blemish-free one as well.

Be careful with Vallejo Model Air, the bottles I've used so far had major tip dry problems. I've googled this problem and it appears to be well known. That said, most of the bottles I have were bought 2nd hand and I think some might have exceeded their shelf-life. I'm still doing some experimenting with them as it'd be a pity to throw them away. My experiences so far: I like to thin them even further to spray them at lower pressures, but there aren't many thinners that seem to work with them, not even their own brand. Using Vallejo Airbrush cleaner as a thinner got me slightly better results. Afterwards someone recommended Createx Wicked W500 Reducer, I've done one session with it and it seemed to work a lot better, further experimentation will be needed though. I recently tried UMP's thinner with relatively good results. The bottle of Vallejo I used seemed to have "spoiled" but it went on with relative ease and the tip-dry was "bearable". Didn't adhere to the plastic very well though so for outer surfaces priming is a must. My best spraying experiences so far have been with Gunze Aqueous thinned with Mr Color Levelling thinner, which is a lacquer thinner so best not used indoors unless you have a spark-proof spray booth. It sprays wonderfully though and the paint is pretty durable, even on bare plastic. Dunno whether or not this is due to the paint being good or due to the slight etching effect the lacquer might have on the plastic. @Willy_N: I used to hate the Vallejo primer! I've only used it once so far, when it dried it turned into a rubbery substance that peeled of while trying to sand it and it didn't adhere to the plastic at all! I might give it another go though, a couple of months ago there was a video from Florymodels describing the proper way to use the stuff. I'll see if I can find it for you. Edit: Found it, the part about priming starts at 6:50 and at 09:45 he starts talking about the Vallejo Primer. In case you're interested I also found a video where he compares the Vallejo to a primer from MIG productions, starts at 4:20. Hope they're helpful, enjoy!

I used the website as well, received an automated response that they received my mail. I got a reply on the same day saying that a replacement was shipped using 1st class delivery, it arrived in Belgium in less than a week. Full marks to their customer service! If you did not receive any kind of confirmation e-mail something must have gone wrong with the contact form, so you might want to give it another try.

Bought the whole UMP product range (except the photo-etch placers because I forgot to add them to the basket ) Only used their thinner and cleaner so far but seems to be good stuff. Might do a short review in another topic after I've used their stuff for a bit.

I fully agree! I'd even like to add to that that I'm NOT looking forward to Bandai's new Star Wars releases, I do NOT watch Anime, do NOT build kits from Anime like Nausicaa or One Piece and I especially am NOT crazy about Gundam kits... ... ...and I don't like sarcasm. And back on topic, I'm now eagerly awaiting the separation of the second part from the sprue! Any news on that yet?

Looking forward to this one, I really like the Hurricane! I prefer it to the Spit actually

I'm fairly new at scribing so there's still a lot of experimenting going on here. I also use Radu's tools, namely the regular Scribe-R and the Scribe-R file set. They're both great tools with the latter one specifically aimed at those hard to reach places and curvy surfaces. I've used that one mostly for restoring lost detail after sanding and I'm very happy with the results so far. The Scribe-R itself is great at what it does but a bit trickier to use. I often make the mistake of pressing down too hard so it shoots of in any direction but the one I want it to go in. As with lots of modeling techniques, patience and practice are key I guess. I read/saw somewhere that extra thin cement can be used to soften those rough edges on scribed lines. I've used the method on one model so far and it seems to work, either that or there wasn't much of an edge to begin with.

Sorry for my absence, caught the stomach flu so not feeling great atm. Thx for all the tips, it has to be a bad bottle since after two days the pigment has already separated from the rest of the paint again. As for the recommendations: I have the gray Mr Surfacer and, if I manage to thin it correctly, it's great stuff as well but the Alclad is just so much easier to use. Shake, pour, spray, no messing around with mixture or psi until the spiderwebbing goes away. Alclad 's very forgiving stuff for someone who's not that experienced at airbrushing yet. Too bad their quality doesn't seem to be very consistent from what I've read here so far... I might give the Tamiya primer a try but I'm not very keen on rattle cans. (I kinda prefer most of the paint to go ON the model. ) Perhaps decanting might work out for me...

I've used Alclad's grey primer a couple of times now and I absolutely love the stuff! So a while ago I bought their white and black primer as well. Now the white primer is where my problem lies. The bottle had been standing upright for quite sometime so the pigment had settled on the bottom. After shaking the bottle until my arm nearly dropped of it seemed that the paint had mixed properly. nothing left on the bottom and you could nicely hear the beads rattle in the bottle (Dr. Seuss would have loved that one ) So, off with the cap and out with the paint, straight into the 'ole Badger and that's where things went horribly wrong. What should have been very thin paint was instead a white gunky foamy mess. It sprayed like crap, splatters everywhere, tip dry every five seconds. I managed to spray my model in the end. It dried pretty quickly and with a bit of sanding I got a reasonable finish but what an absolute nightmare it was compared to the grey primer. The worst part was cleaning out the airbrush afterwards. That sticky gunk just wouldn't come off! After what seemed like an eternity of cleaning I decided to try the black primer, for comparison. It was like night and day (and I'm not just talking about the colors here) A little bit of shaking, nice thin paint, went on like a dream and just needed a couple of drops of lacquer thinner to clean out the airbrush. So, for those who managed to read until the end , has anyone had similar experiences with Alclad? Did I do something wrong or has the white primer "gone bad"? Could there be a way to fix this or will I need to buy a new bottle?