Dealing with bad rivets and panel lines?

[mpk]

What does one dilute Mr Surfacer with?

[LSP_Kevin]

What does one dilute Mr Surfacer with?

 

The best product to use is Mr. Color Thinner, or Mr. Color Levelling Thinner. I use the former without any issues. Some folks use hardware-store lacquer thinner, but your level of success will depend on the exact formulation of said lacquer thinner, as they tend to vary a lot. With the one I get locally, it doesn't work very well at all at normal thinning ratios. Great for cleaning out the airbrush, however!

 

Kev

[Zero77]

The best product to use is Mr. Color Thinner, or Mr. Color Levelling Thinner. I use the former without any issues. Some folks use hardware-store lacquer thinner, but your level of success will depend on the exact formulation of said lacquer thinner, as they tend to vary a lot. With the one I get locally, it doesn't work very well at all at normal thinning ratios. Great for cleaning out the airbrush, however!

 

Kev

 

Or Tamiya Lacquer thinner. I use it now, as the smell is way better than the awful smell of the Mr. Color thinner !

[Cees Broere]

Don't buy it.  It only encourages them to do more crap like that.  It's not outside the realm of possibility that there will eventually be another 1/32 F-100 kit.

Ahh! That explains why you don't build models.

[Dave T Brown]

I've just gone through this with Trumpeter's F-105D where the so called rivet's would, in reality be more like 3/4" dia holes ramdomly placed all over the airframe.

I've used thin cyano acrylate to fill them, then sand off the excess a few hours later. I worked in stages i.e. fill the holes / spurious panel lines in a specific area, sand, flash with acrylic car primer, fill any remining defects with cyano, sand then flash again. Then on to the next section. It takes quite some time but for me it's worth it. 

Bare in mind the cyano gets harder the longer you leave it.

Good Luck!

[Zero77]

Ahh! That explains why you don't build models.

 

Glad i wasn't drinking coffee when i read that, otherwise i'd have to repaint the room !

Edited September 2, 2016 by Zero77

[Midnightwrecking]

Hi Chuck,

 

I feel your pain. When it comes to reworking surface details, I find that it's many times easier to remove the raised lines and rivets of an older kit (for example Hasegawa's stable of LS jets from the late 1970s like the Skyhawk, Freedom Fighter, and Starfighter) compared to filling the oftentimes unsatisfactory or inaccurate features on a modern engraved kit.

 

In theory, it should be easy to fill recessed lines and fasteners: fill 'em up with your medium of choice, let dry, and sand flush, creating a "blank slate" on which to work.

 

In reality, it's seldom so effortless.

 

The inevitable long term shrinkage from any solvent based filler (which might not reveal itself for weeks or even months) is one cause for frustration. Another is surface tension which, along with other microscopic processes, resists a putty/filler's ability to thoroughly permeate and "wet" small depressions. Too often pores are only "covered over," instead of filled, resulting in their reemergence after sanding back the surface.

 

Just ask anyone who has attempted the Sisyphean task of filling and "smoothing out" the wing of a Tamiya P-51D. For every success story, I'll bet at least a dozen modelers would admit to failure, at least on the first attempt (and I'm one of them!).

 

Here's an approach that works for me. Though I confess to not having tried it over an entire model, it's proved very effective for parts of my long-drawn-out Electric Intruder build (so long running I'm tempted to rename its build thread "Plight of the Intruder").

 

The technique involves the use of a scribing tool, stretched sprue and cyanoacrylate glue.

 

To illustrate, here's a look at the outside surface of the RH jet air intake of the Trumpeter A-6. Note the four rows of engraved fasteners (intended to depict permanent structural rivet heads, in this case).

 

 

Photos of the real aircraft reveal a different look. The only fasteners visible are the screws for removable panels. The pattern of flush structural riveting, so prominently portrayed by Trumpeter, is practically invisible, even up-close at high resolution.

 

 

I decided to fill all of the kit engravings and start fresh. First, I ran my scriber along each row of rivets, the "dot-to-dot" treatment creating one long groove in the end. A length of stretched sprue is laid into each channel and secured in place with cyanoacrylate glue (medium or high viscosity types work best). Here, I would caution against the use of solvent cements like Tamiya Extra Thin to avoid that "sinking feeling" weeks later.

 

 

 

When the glue drys, everything is block sanded flush. I recommend the use of hard-backed sanders, at least in the early stages of dressing a seam treated with CA glue.

 

While it might seem (seam?) too labor-intensive a process, I can happily report that this technique seldom requires any do-overs (unlike most other methods, for reasons already mentioned). And it's as good a surface as any for re-scribing detail.

 

Here's a look at the part after seam treatment and a light coat of primer paint - the only blemish requiring touch up is a panel line that I originally addressed with a "conventional" technique of CA glue only (no initial widening of the trench or insertion of stretched sprue)...lesson learned!

 

 

Hope this helps.

 

Rich

These are great shots. It shows that the aircraft was finished in a coat of thick heavy paint that has filled in almost all the surface imperfections leaving only panels etc. that are necessary for maintenance. You can even see by the sheen that it is not a smooth surface either! Something to remember when critiquing someone's painting skills.