1/32 P-38L "Kicked Up A Notch". Jan 15/16: FINISHED!

[scvrobeson]

Huh, that's a really cool little trick to use the Sharpie. I will have to give that a try. Never would have thought of doing that. That's why your builds are so great, full of innovative ideas, and new techniques to try.

 

 

 

 

Matt 

[chuck540z3]

Thanks Guys.  That's what I enjoy so much about our hobby.  There's always some neat things to experiment with, some of which you learn from others and some you just make up yourself.  The Sharpie idea is one of those I thought of myself, but I'll bet others have tried the same thing because it's so obvious.  The GOOP idea is all mine for sure, so sometimes you crash and burn!

 

Here's another idea I'm having great success with lately, which no doubt has been used by others because it too is so obvious:  Future as a microfiller/putty!  With several super tiny wobbles on the nose section where I filled the GOOP depressions, I needed to fill them and smooth them out.  Putty- even thinned putty- is too thick and crude and won't stick to such small depressions without coming off with sandpaper.  CA glue will work, but the sanding involved is a ton of work and I'll likely create some new micro depressions on the edges of the glue.  Future brushed on fairly thick and allowed to cure and dry for 3 days works PERFECT!  It's thin, it sticks and it will sand to a feather edge with super fine sandpaper (~1000 grit) if it's good and dry.  Another good use of Future as a filler is around the windscreen and cockpit, where you might need to fill some gaps but don't want to sand much, if at all.  As you probably know, it shrinks like crazy with drying, so you need about 3-4 times as much Future as you have a gap to fill.

Edited November 6, 2015 by chuck540z3

[Vandy 1 VX 4]

Chuck   Do you ever have the Sharpe bleed through the paint or Future?    I have had this ruin a Nissan 300Z kit paint job!!! 

 

 

Cheers

[chuck540z3]

Chuck   Do you ever have the Sharpe bleed through the paint or Future?    I have had this ruin a Nissan 300Z kit paint job!!! 

 

 

Cheers

 

 

Never Future, but I'm not surprised if the Sharpie attacked a paint job.  As you know the pen stinks because there's a carrier for the black pigment in the ink.  It evaporates fast, so it's something other than an acrylic or other water based fluid.  Strangely though, the pen I have says that it's "Non-Toxic, Conforms to ASTM D-4236", whatever that means.

 

Before I apply the Sharpie, I remove all paint from the surface, which in this case was the bottom of the side windows.  I used Tamiya Lacquer Thinner, which is hot on paint but cool on plastic, and I carefully used a microbrush so that I didn't erode any paint from the window sides.  The Future coat I applied to the canopy parts likely remains, but there was no wrinkling or other stress to the surface that I could detect.

 

If you just painted the canopy part or where it is should be glued with black paint instead, the Tamiya Extra Thin Cement will attack the paint immediately, making it bubble up and swell, creating a mess.  The paint will also provide a partial barrier to the plastic to plastic join, so the bond will be fragile.  With the super thin Sharpie ink, there is nothing to swell, so the cement blends with the ink to create a black glue.  This mixture is not perfect by any means, but due to the dark black color, you can't see many imperfections through the clear part.

 

Here's one more example of the first time I used this method on a Tamiya F-14 kit, which has a huge canopy that you need to glue to a correspondingly large frame.  Sorry for the crappy pics, but I think you can see the big whitish base where it attaches to the frame, in this case the Aires replacement for the kit parts.

 

 

 

 

After using a Sharpie on the bottom edge and cementing the canopy in, you can't see the join any more.

 

 

[Vandy 1 VX 4]

Thank you Chuck  for you comments and explanation

 

Cheers

Danny 

[FunkyZeit]

Gotta try this.

 

Justin

[chuck540z3]

November 27, 2015

Happy Thanksgiving & Black Friday to our American friends!  


Not a lot to show today, but what you see took a LOT of work to get to this stage.  I'm also running out of parts, which means that I must be nearing the end of this build that I started one year ago.  No surprise there, because typically I'm very slow anyway and my GOOP disaster has cost me at least one extra month of work.   What I lack in skill, I more than make up for with my OCD with anything plastic.  With a bare metal finish (BMF), you can't sweat the tiny details enough, because every tiny flaw will be magnified.

The last parts to deal with are the landing gear doors.  Like a most of the Trumpeter parts, they are fairly crude with variable rivet and panel line detail and lots of sprue attachments to remove.  I spend a lot of time cleaning up these parts, then re-riveting them to bring back the missing detail.  I also used the Eduard PE parts to replace most of the hinges.  On the nose gear door, you remove all the kit hinges and the holes where they are to be inserted.  As is, the kit door does not fit the gear well opening as it should, with the front of the door flush with the sides of the gear well and the rear with a gap.  Instead, there's a gap at both the front and back, which is wrong.  With the Eduard hinges, most of that can be fixed.

Here's the doors after removing the kit detail and attaching the Eduard parts in their place.  I left off most of the hinges, which will be attached when the doors are glued on permanently at the end of the build.







Here's a door dry fitted to the boom.  The outer kit hinges were trimmed back to conform better to the Eduard hinge fascia glued onto the sides.







Another angle.  I'm not happy with the plastic rod at the rear, which is too thick.  I will cut them back later, inserting a pin into each rod to taper the rod to the Eduard PE assembly at the rear.








I have long been a big proponent of using Krylon gloss black as a primer for Alclad paints.  It sprays really nice and the drying time is fairly short, but I have noticed that it takes at least a week to fully dry and cure, which seems too long for a lacquer.  Talking to my modeling buddy Mike O'Hare (Mofo on ARC), he informed me that Krylon was changed from a lacquer to a fast drying enamel a few years ago.  I also learned the following from talking to him and looking at paint labeling:

High gloss Alclad finishes like Chrome or Polished aluminum are alcohol based and are not true lacquers, even though the bottle may say so in the generic "Alclad Lacquer" labeling.  That is why Alclad recommends enamel base primers for them, so that they will adhere to the base coat stronger than other paints because the enamel retains just enough "stickiness" to bond to these high shine finishes.  If people complain about the Alclad finish rubbing off, they probably didn't use the correct base coat.  The other Alclad colors like Aluminum, Steel, etc. are true lacquers, which can be sprayed on well cured enamel finishes (like Krylon) or, better yet, lacquer base coats like the Tamiya TS-14 Gloss Black.  The high shine finishes don't mask very well and they may react to decal softening solutions, so make sure you coat them with Alclad Aqua Gloss Clear finishes like ALC 600 before doing so.  The other real lacquer colors are quite tough and don't really need a clear coat, but you might add one anyway to add shine if that's what you are after.
Before painting the base coat, make sure your plastic finish is as PERFECTLY SMOOTH as possible, with careful sanding with progressively finer sandpapers.  This takes a lot of time, but if you want a really nice BMF, this step is compulsory.   Once you find flaws- and you will- repair them and re-spray the primer coat before you spray Alclad.

Whenever I have yakked about Krylon as a good base coat for Alclad, somebody pipes up and says that Tamiya Gloss Black Lacquer is equal, if not better than Krylon.  As modelers we generally stick to what we know that works, but for this model I thought I would give it a try.  Am I ever glad I did- and I doubt that I will ever use Krylon again!  Here's what the TS-14 spray cans look like it you are looking for them.  Unfortunately up here in bilingual Canada, we have to have all labeling in both English and French, so covering some of the English instructions is a real PITA.







This paint is called a “synthetic lacquer†according to the Tamiya website, whatever that means.  All I know is that this is the best paint I have ever sprayed from my airbrush.  Decanted from the can, I found that I had to thin it a lot with Tamiya lacquer thinner in order to get the right viscosity after the propellant was “degassedâ€.  My guess is about 60% paint and 40% thinner.  Although Krylon is great, this paint seems denser and it doesn't ball up and cause dusting with air turbulence near wing roots, etc.  It also dries fast- really fast- so that you can finger touch it within 5 minutes if you are careful.  It also dries really nice and hard, so that sanding within 24 hours is possible.  Here's an example of TS-14 sprayed on the gear doors.  Beautiful.







After a day of drying, I sprayed on the Alclad.  I used regular Aluminum on the inside of the doors and high gloss Chrome on the outside to replicate the polished aluminum look I am looking for.  Alclad makes a Polished Aluminum which is pretty good, but I like the Chrome better to get the look I want.  Spray each Alcad coat on in a misting pass and don't let the Alclad pool or run or it might bite into the primer coat and bubble up.  Go over the area to be painted several times to get the saturation you want, but let the Alclad dry a bit before misting on another coat.








Next was painting TS-14 on the whole model after extensive surface prep with sandpapers and paint thinner to remove any oils from my hands.  I usually start on the bottom of the model, just in case I screw something up that won't show that much later if I have problems.  Fortunately, I had no real problems at all.  Here is the first very thin coat, which will expose any flaws.  BTW, masking off the gear wells was really hard to do and took a lot of time.








Wings generally look good with no big flaws, although some dust has settled on the dried paint already.









The inevitable flaws, which are easy to fix.  Those “Tiny Bubbles†were encountered in several places, where I believe I didn't get all the oil from my hands off with thinner.  No problem.  A little sanding and repainting will fix that, while the seam lines that shouldn't be there will be fixed with CA glue filler.







Tiny scuff marks from sanding will show up too.  If they aren't fixed now, the Alclad paint will magnify them later.







Next I'll paint the top of the model, let it dry for a day, then fix the flaws on the bottom which will have dried for at least 2 days.  When that is done, I'll attend to the inevitable flaws on the top.

Thanks for checking in!

Cheers,
Chuck

Edited November 28, 2015 by chuck540z3

[geedubelyer]

Wow!......Just WOW!

 

That is brilliant gloss Chuck. Good job bro'.

[ClumsyDude]

That is some seriously professional gloss. I'm impressed.

 

Jim

[Guest Peterpools]

Chuck

"Brilliant" Alclad finish .. looking absolutely fantastic. I've been experimenting with AK Extreme Metals as an alternative to Alclad, which I've used for years and the results so far are very promising. I have a 1/48 Tamiya P-47 Bubble Jug underway in the Non LSP forum using the AK Extreme Metals and am calling it equal to Alclad at this stage. Masking on top of AK's Extreme Metal presented no problems at all. For the primer, I used AK's Black base ... works wonderfully but oh the smell!

http://forum.largescaleplanes.com/index.php?showtopic=58955&page=2

Keep 'em coming

Peter

[LSP_Kevin]

Nice work, Chuck! I'm a big fan of the Tamiya rattle can colours, but oddly, have yet to try the Gloss Black. I've settled on Mr Surfacer Black 1500 for the time being, though. I've also used Alclad's own Gloss Black Base, but with mixed results. Sometimes it just doesn't seem to dry.

 

Looking forward to more!

 

Kev

[Ironwing]

Chuck

 

Not only is your work flawless, but you meticulous detailed approach is to be envied...lovely work indeed.

[chuck540z3]

Thank you everyone for your very kind comments.  This painting stage is always my favorite, but it's also the most challenging, because I want this BMF to look KILLER!  My Mustang BMF finish was pretty good I think, but this one needs to be as perfect as I can make it, since there will be almost no weathering to hide the odd flaw.

 

Chuck

"Brilliant" Alclad finish .. looking absolutely fantastic. I've been experimenting with AK Extreme Metals as an alternative to Alclad, which I've used for years and the results so far are very promising. I have a 1/48 Tamiya P-47 Bubble Jug underway in the Non LSP forum using the AK Extreme Metals and am calling it equal to Alclad at this stage. Masking on top of AK's Extreme Metal presented no problems at all. For the primer, I used AK's Black base ... works wonderfully but oh the smell!

http://forum.largescaleplanes.com/index.php?showtopic=58955&page=2

Keep 'em coming

Peter

 

 

Beautiful Jug Peter.  I was wondering how I missed it, until I saw the scale at 1/48 in another forum.  Bravo on a KILLER BMF! - I hope to do as well.  Also, thanks for the tip on the AK Metal line of paints.  I've never heard of them, but they look very interesting.

[LSP_Kevin]

Also, thanks for the tip on the AK Metal line of paints.  I've never heard of them, but they look very interesting.

 

Chuck, I put together a review a few months back:

 

http://www.largescaleplanes.com/reviews/review.php?rid=1510

 

Kev

[chuck540z3]

Nice work, Chuck! I'm a big fan of the Tamiya rattle can colours, but oddly, have yet to try the Gloss Black. I've settled on Mr Surfacer Black 1500 for the time being, though. I've also used Alclad's own Gloss Black Base, but with mixed results. Sometimes it just doesn't seem to dry.

 

Looking forward to more!

 

Kev

 

Kev,

 

Does Mr. Surfacer 1500 fill much?  After careful replacement of surface detail, the last thing I want is to plug it up with filler, even a little.

 

 

Chuck, I put together a review a few months back:

 

http://www.largescaleplanes.com/reviews/review.php?rid=1510

 

Kev

 

Thank you, I just checked out your review.  Based upon what I've read, (great review BTW), I'm sticking with Alclad for now, but I will also keep the AK line of paints door open.  I used to think that Krylon was the only primer worth using, as others tried to push me toward the Tamiya TS line of lacquer paints.  I wish I had tried them earlier.