darkstar2k

Hi everyone, I wanted to share something. I heard about Novus plastic polish before on a blog somewhere and I decided to buy some from Amazon (about CAD$20 for three bottles). I just used it on my Revell 1/72 Twin Otter. If anyone has any experience building this kit, you'll know the passenger windows don't fit very well at all. I wanted them flush so I sanded the hell out of the sides. Anyway, so after wet sanding the fuselage halves down with progressively finer sandpaper (400, 600, 1000, 2000) I used Novus Plastic Polish applied with a cotton swab on the windows on one half to compare. Well, see for yourself... I might actually finish this model now! The only real bottles you need are Step 3 and Step 2, Step 1 is just to make it shiny, doesn't really repair scratches at all.

I'm pretty unhappy with imgur. Does anyone know something better? Is Photobucket any good? Imgur seems to have a viral/social aspect to it, which I dislike. That said, I got the wings done. They need a gloss coat, but pretty sure they look okay. Tamiya's curvy line masking tape is amazing. It's vinyl, like electrical tape, but without all the glue. I guess imgur changed their sharing thingie, so I can't share the photo with you.

Hi everyone! Arrrgh. When I pulled up the masking tape it's hard to explain. It's almost like the paint hadn't cured and was still outgassing, and stuck to the tape. The paint didn't peel away, but left a rough texture behind. I'm sure it's from all the coats of white. I was so heartbroken I didn't take a picture. Instead I stripped it all down using 70% isopropyl alcohol and an old toothbrush. Took about an hour. Interestingly, the primer was being pulled up, too. At least it wasn't as bad as Vallejo's primer that I tried using, once and never again. Well, I took this as an opportunity, because I was having trouble getting paint into the wing roots (?) of the engines, so I took them off. I also wasn't pleased with the shape of them, because I wasn't able to use a Flex-i-file on them (or, more likely, I was impatient) so they looked squarish. Or rhomboid-ish. I also removed the raised detail off the top of the wings because I wasn't able to keep them without them looking too blobby and out of scale. I don't even know if they exist. I guess I'll find out when I go home in a few weeks. These are the engines after they've been cleaned up slightly. A lot of paint got deposited inside from the stripping process. If you look closely you can see a step on the left engine that still has to be gotten rid of, and my initial puttying job to get rid of the step on the outside of the engine on the right. My fingers look gross because it was my day off and I was painting three models today. Anyway, I ran out of Tamiya's grey primer that I had decanted months ago. I was able to do the top half, but when I did the bottom half I had to use the Liquid Surface Primer that I showed before. I initially did it at a 50-50 ratio of primer-laquer thinner but it basically obliterated the raised detail (which I ended up sanding off anyway, so no matter) because it was too thick. Also, I got into the habit of making a wet coat by going over the wing a few times. You can't do that when airbrushing with LSP, because it leaves a light dusty coat that has to be lightly sanded off. I think, like someone else said somewhere, that the solvents in either the LSP or Tamiya's Laquer Thinner attack the previous coat before it's settled. I tried this theory on an Airfix 1/72 Hawker Typhoon I'm building simultaneously and found that it's mostly true. I sprayed the underside of both wings, then the underside of the elevators. I immediately went back to the wings to put another coat on but waited a few minutes to do the elevators. Powder on the wings, none on the elevators. Another thing is that decanted Tamiya Grey Primer leaves a glossy coat, whereas LSP leaves a flat coat. Anyway, I ended up mixing LSP 2:3 with Tamiya's Laquer Thinner, and doing light coats, it works nicely. I also bought some Tamiya Fine White Primer today, and I decanted some of it, but immediately marked where it was before the propellant really started boiling off (like someone else somewhere said they did). After it was done, I added Tamiya's Laquer Thinner up to the line and we'll see what it acts like later on. For those of you interested, I have an Iwata HP-CS airbrush with a 3.5 mm nozzle. My compressor is an Iwata Silver Jet. Since I live in an apartment, I also bought a 5 gallon air tank which I refill at the gas station around the corner, for when I want to paint late at night. It's rated for 125 psi but I can only get ~90 psi from the tire filler. I outfitted that with a moisture trap, and a pressure regulator, which I set at ~18 psi, to match my Silver Jet, which maxes out at 18 psi. I can get about five minutes of continuous spray. If anyone's really really interested, I can set a timer and just keep adding water to the cup to see how long it really lasts. Well, not really great news today, but I hope someone can learn something from my trials. Thanks for watching!

Holy crap masking this was annoying. I'd hate to use decals for it (again). If you look at the reference photos the wavy lines extend under the movable part of the fuselage and meet at the top. That was hard to get aligned with one piece of masking tape, never mind two separate decal that meet at the top of the fuselage. Another masking photo. You can see some paint bleed on the elevators. I actually forgot that the elevators were painted the same colour as the tail, otherwise I wouldn't have masked it to begin with. I just said screw it and painted with Tamiya X-14 Sky Blue instead of colour matching. I had problems with my first set of V1 Decals (there was hair or something under the decal film) and they sent me another. It still had the same problem, but less. Even so, that was annoying. Each sheet comes with 6 of the polar bear logos (3 per side) so now I have 12 logos to mess about with. Well, maybe less, because of the fibres/hair or something. Can't really fault them as a home business. That Enterprise model you see in the background had an eyelash on the decals, and they're a big company. Anyway, my original point was, I'll have to cut very very carefully around the logo now that I haven't matched the colours. Before I started doing all this masking I noticed some white splatter drops on the starboard fuselage. I basically said "meh" and I'll get around to it later. Besides, I'm out of gloss white paint. Thanks for watching!

Oh wow, my first build and I already have an audience Ha! I get a kick out of these animated emoticons. Anyway bad news. Turns out that upon further research I didn't have to make such a glossy white finish, because the actual white parts of the plane (i.e. the fuselage) doesn't reflect the wings, or the ground. It's either a satin white or a flat colour. Nuts. All the reflections are in the tail. Now that I'm almost done painting the fuselage, I can start on the actual livery. I don't like V1 Decals' attempt, like I said, so I have to mask and paint very curvy lines. Not bad, not great. Just a pain in the butt. The colour matching is the thing. Pretty straight forward. But then.... Using scalemodeldb.com's paint chart I found the closest match, but it's going to need tweaking.

Thanks! It needs another sand and coat because there was a bit of splatter. To be honest, early on I was airbrushing pretty vigorously and some paint spilled from the cup onto the model. I never would have noticed the difference in shading had that not happened. So I've been trying to cover up my mistake(s) for a week

Oh cool! I've been to Inuvik and Coppermine as a kid. They're a great little airline. If you watch that video they can't use autopilot on approaches with the -200, so it's all manual. Have a great flight! And take plenty of pictures lol.

It's been a while but you'll see why in a moment... Primed and sanded with 3000 grit sanding pad. I wanted the smoothest surface possible for the paint to come, so I airbrushed a couple of coats of Future. I think this also helped to hide some of the micro-scratches. After the first couple of coats, I'm thinking I should have used white primer. I believe I used white primer on the left one. You can also see my experiments with scribing panel lines by using a sewing needle in a pin vise. Many coats of Tamiya X-1 white (nearly two bottles worth) and you can't see the primer any more except under very specific lighting. I think the clear gloss coat over the grey primer was a mistake; light gets below the surface and bounces around a bunch, reflecting the primer more than it should. Although, this had the cool effect of making some pearlescent reflections early on. One day I'll have to experiment with a base of primer, some sort of metal paint, then a gloss coat of Future, then a gloss paint, just to see what it looks like. Thanks for watching!

Thanks for the kind words, I'll have to move this up to the top of my queue of my builds in progress Good catch on the pale blue, Jeff, it doesn't really show up in any other pictures though. Whenever you get around to the BPK kit I'll be watching with interest. I might pick it up anyway. Here's a YouTube video about Canadian North.

Hi all, this is a build log of my first model after getting back into the hobby after 20 years... Hope you enjoy... The original plane I'm trying to replicate. The 737-200 can land on gravel runways, which is essential in some of the communities in the Northwest Territories. This also has sentimental value because I take this airline home to visit my parents. One of the flights I was on I was sitting next to someone who supposedly flew all over the world, and he was flabbergasted when they fed us. I guess they're one of the only airlines that still offers complimentary breakfast/lunch/dinner service. The food's pretty good, too. My first attempt after 20 years out of the game. Decals are from V1decals.com and while I'm pleased with the shape and the effort, I don't like that it's printed on white decal paper. As you can see, I didn't know that at the time. Those wavy lines would be a pain to cut around. I also obliterated the raised panel lines on the wings, and attempted to use a scribing tool to deepen the control surfaces. That didn't go so well. The start of my second attempt. This time I didn't try with the control surfaces. Tamiya's Liquid Surface Primer (LSP) isn't bad. It's okay for very fine seam lines, but it shrinks (see next pictures). Using a square piece of 400 grit sandpaper folded into four I was able to get into the corners of this seam without affecting the raised panel line. Of the four, this was the worst and needs some work. I'm likely going to remove these panel lines, I only kept them as masking guides. I used Squadron white putty diluted with laquer thinner so I was able to brush it on. This is after sanding. It still needs work. I found that the the LSP works really well when covering over the putty, and it eliminates the roughness of the putty when it's dry. After I sand this to shape, I'll put a coat of LSP on and sand again using finer sandpaper. On this 1/48 Revell MIG-29 Fulcrum I tried getting rid of the raised panel lines and scribing them in plastic, then decided against it. As you can see, LSP shrinks when drying, and didn't really help to do much to fill in the gaps. I decided to mask and paint the northern lights livery, so I photocopied the decal sheet from V1decals. As you can see in the very first picture, there's a very fine yellow/orange line surrounding the dark blue stripes which isn't replicated very well on the decals. Here I had cut out the stripes and taped them to a sheet of Tamiya masking paper. I went over the edges of the cut out parts with a felt marker and removed it. Once I cut this up (very carefully) I'll have five masks. Next steps: Airbrush decanted Tamiya Fine Surface Primer, then fix any obvious imperfections with a 3000 grit sanding sponge I picked up at Canadian Tire. Paint it all in gloss white, and probably use that sanding spongy stuff to knock down orange peel. Mask off the tail and light blue parts and airbrush Tamiya's Sky Blue. Remask those parts, paint the wavy line in orange. Pick up Tamiya's wavy line masking tape, and mask the edges of the new masks. Paint the dark blue. Pray before removing masks. At some point think about the wheels.