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Shin

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  1. To anyone else that is searching for this in the future, we have more thorough discussion about this topic in Vinster's other thread:
  2. No need to apologize @Vinster, and I hope no one got stressed over this, we're all here to share and learn, which sometimes involves discussion and debate. I know I've learned a few things from this thread. If you have something to test it on, I wouldn't give up on the Humbrol just yet. Apply a nice layer of X-22, let sit for a day or two, and then try the washes again. See if that'll work for you. Modeling seems to be 25% tools, 25% techniques, and 50% patience. Regarding turpentine, hard to say, as there are so many brands and strengths out there. Best way would be to test, but as a general rule I would bet that hardware store turps would be much more aggressive than hobby thinners. As for my personal X-22 experience, I've thinned it successfully with Mr. Color Levelling thinner (preferred method), Tamiya X-20A, and isopropyl alcohol (91%), usually at a roughly 40% X-22/60% thinner ratio to airbrush on. I'd imagine the Tamiya Lacquer thinner you are using should be just fine. It sounds like Dave says water would work as well, but I've never attempted this. I realize you don't mention whether you are brushing or airbrushing the X-22 on - I know people have had success, but I never have been able to get acceptable coats brushing on Tamiya acrylics. It sounds like you are getting some Pledge/Future, and I know lots of modellers have had success with this as well, especially if you are hairy brushing, but I've never used it. A lot of modelers on YouTube seem to like the Mr. Color GX100 (lacquer), or Alclad Aqua Gloss (acrylic) if not using X-22 for their gloss coats. Sorry for the lot of words, hopefully you or someone else finds it valuable. Best of luck with your testing!
  3. Thanks Steve. You're right, alcohol type acrylics may be a more apt name for it. The few lacquers I have do indeed have a much more pungent odor than the X-series Tamiya paints.
  4. Fair point about Future Steve, but I still have to disagree with you on a few things: 1. Tamiya X-22 (and non-enamel X & XF paints) is marketed as an acrylic, but as @PhoenixII said, it's unofficially known as an acrylic lacquer due to it's properties. This is why it works so well thinned with Mr. Color Levelling Thinner - a lacquer thinner. 2. DO use enamel washes over acrylic gloss coats. I'm not trying to instigate anything Steve, but what you are claiming is simply demonstrably false. I have nearly a dozen models with Mig enamel products on top of Tamiya X-22 specifically. A simple google search will net you results of dozens more. Enamel washes are best used on cured acrylic or lacquer gloss coats. 3. Still don't believe me or the masses of the internet? Humbol themselves has a YouTube video entitled, "Introduction to Enamel washes". Guess what their first step is? Covering the model with an acrylic gloss coat (their acrylic Gloss Clear in this case). I believe the enamel products used in this video is exactly what Vinster is asking about. @Vinster, i asked questions about your technique because there could be a few reasons this isn't working for you. Here are some possible solutions: 1. You're not letting the X-22 enough time to dry/cure. I say 24 hours should be a minimum to be safe, but I know some people don't wait that long and it still works. 2. You don't have complete coverage of the X-22 over your model, and the enamel thinner is attacking the paint underneath (in areas where gloss is lacking). 3. You are using too much enamel thinner. Look in the video above -- use a paper towel or cotton bud moistened with thinner, not dripping with it. Enough thinner and/or pressing hard on the model will potentially affect/lift acrylic layers. They are "hot" chemicals after all. The excess enamel should be able to be wiped off with no or minimal pressure to the model. 4. It's possible the Humbrol thinner is just too strong. The thinner seems to be the common denominator with the Humbrol & Tamiya wash problems you're having trouble with. Have you tried any other hobby thinners? If you get a chance try Mig or AK Interactive products. I don't have Humbrol thinner so can't test with it. 5. I actually just thought of this - you don't mention what you're thinning the X-22 with (if at all). What's your process for applying the X-22? Good luck, we'll try and continue to help. Hopefully the video above gets something to click in your workflow and you get the results you want.
  5. I just responded to your other topic with the same question. I have to disagree with Steve, enamel weathering products can definitely be used over acrylic gloss coats, and is one of the reasons why Future as a gloss coat is still so popular. How long are you letting the X-22 dry for before weathering, and then what technique are you using to remove the wash?
  6. How long are you letting the x-22 dry for before attempting to weather? What technique are you using to remove the wash? For reference I usually wait at least 24 hours and haven't had issues with Mig enamel thinners not Mona Lisa odorless thinners on X-22. I can't imagine Humbrol thinners to be much more aggressive.
  7. Find your kit on ScaleMates website, it should contain a pretty decent list of compatible aftermarket parts for it. Just be aware some may no longer be available, but it'll give you guidance on what to search for at retailers.
  8. Sorry can't help with Vallejo, but if by MMP you mean Mission Model Paints, check out Model Paint Solutions' website resources or shoot John an email. I believe one of his articles on the site is specifically about doing fine lines. I've seen him do it in person with his Harder Steenbeck.
  9. Shin

    Primer Advice

    A couple ways to look at this. If the green and yellow primers you are going to use are the same shade as your final paint colors, just use those instead of the paint. If not, using a single primer color for all your projects (grey for example) would save you money not having to buy multiple primer shades in addition to all the paint colors. Different primers could offer different color shading and modulations under a semi-transparent basecoat, but if you're using it simply as a base for your full opacity basecoat, keep it simple with grey primer.
  10. Got more paint on! Metal parts are Mission Models Cold Rolled Steel, but most of the other details are hand painted using some Scale75 figure paints I'm trying out. Going to gloss, decal and wash, then try some weathering with rust effects.
  11. Some progress! Used Apoxie sculpt to fill in some gaps including extending the pole that goes along the bottom of the neck. I also filled in the holes meant for the tabs of the clear engine part, going to glue that in at the end. I think I'm to going to try and do this in subassemblies and hope any gap at the end isn't noticeable. Primed in grey Stynelrez. Then put on my base color. I settled on Mission Models MMP-068, Green Zinc Chromate.
  12. Thanks Dennis. I've been looking up references and will be taking bits and pieces from various different ships. The brunt of my paint scheme it will probably be based on the studio scale ship from the movie, but at 1/1000 scale I'll be more limited in what affects I can achieve. That said, I'm looking forward to weathering this, will be my first attempt at a lot of effects. I've managed to put the kit together. There aren't a lot of pieces and the instructions are in 5 steps broken up onto two pages. Unfortunately there is an error in the instructions for calling out parts, but fortunately each part is so distinct it doesn't matter. The real downside is there is flash everywhere, including small amounts on almost every part. Maybe because I haven't built a lot of kits, but I'm surprised by the amount of flash present, especially for a kit tooled and manufactured in 2018. I don't remember the 1/1000 Enterprise refit having the same issues, and that was made years ago. I also had to cut down or even remove some of the tabs/pegs meant for a secure dry-fit because they interfered with certain things aligning correctly. Right now everything is glued in sub-assemblies: main body, and the two wing sections. The engine cover and forward torpedo launcher are also not glued on. Next step will be filling and gaps and sanding, and then priming. To reduce gaps I may have to glue the wing sections to the body, which will make painting a bit harder. Overall, details look pretty good on the kit!
  13. Quite frankly, I'm disappointed at the lack of Star Trek representation in a sci-fi group build. We have a nearly a dozen X-Wings, a couple Battlestar Galactica, and even something from Space Above and Beyond for heaven's sake! This must be rectified. I started my first 1/48 jet after finishing the YF-21 for this group build, but I think I'll put that on quick hold while I put in another GB entry purely to represent some Trek. My choice will be the Polar Lights 1/1000 Klingon Bird of Prey released last year as part of a two pack with the USS Grissom as seen in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. I've had this in my stash since it was released and this seems like a great reason to crack it open. It's advertised as a snap-fit kit, so it should go together pretty quickly. Due to the size I foresee handpainting a lot of the accents instead of masking and airbrush, so we'll see how that works out. The box is actually really cool, with the decal callouts and color painting guide on the inside sides of the box, allowing them to be printed in color. Two green and one small clear runners contain the entire ship. You can build it with wings up or down in "attack" position. The details look great, but as you can see there's a bit of flash on the sprue, if not much on the actual parts. Included is an extensive decal sheet of which 90% of are for the Grissom. Small black two-piece stands are included. Thanks for reading! (Also in case it doesn't come across via text, my first paragraph is dripping with sarcasm. I'm enjoying looking at all the group builds and have a TIE Fighter finished on my shelf and an A-Wing in the stash.)
  14. I've heard bad things about the "water soluble" oil paints, best stick to those that are thinned using mineral spirits. From what I understand the general rule of thumb is that the more expensive the oil, the finer the pigments. The finer the pigments, the more flexibility you have when thinning the paint. This isn't to say cheaper ones aren't viable to use, but I would do some research to see if anyone has had success with what brand you are looking into. I have a couple of the Abteilung 502 ones designed specifically for modeling, as well as a handful of colors of the Winsor & Newton Artist's Oil colors heavily discounted at the local art store. Both have worked great for me using Mona Lisa Odorless Paint Thinner. Regarding the W&N, I decided to splurge for the Artist Oil vs their mid-range Winton line because I figured each tube may last me decades, might as well pay a few dollars more up front and not worry about what if. W&N are not the only artist grade oil paints either, they are just what I have experience with.
  15. Like with a lot of modeling products that have exploded over the past few years (pigments, washes, filters), you're paying for convinience. Instead of dealing with tubes of paint (which may need to have some oil leeched out of them) and cleaning brushes, this gives you an all in one package for easy application. I'll personally stick with traditional oils for mixability and flexibility, but I can see why someone would buy these. By the same token I buy pigments, you won't see me shaving charcoal or bottling dirt outside. Not worth my time or mess.
  16. If no one provides any feedback about that Vallejo, I use the AK Interactive matte varnish with great success. With the big bottle you get more liquid per price than Tamiya, at least here in the US. No need to thin, right into airbrush, and spray. If no airbrush I've hand brushed very small areas which worked out as well, but haven't attempted this with any large or flat areas. They have a matte and an ultra matte. I didn't really like their semi-gloss though.
  17. It looks like my first images using this method have been up since January, so closing in on a year. At this point I'm more afraid of this .org site shutting down taking the magic code them hah.
  18. Thanks for the research and compilation @Gorby. Regarding Google Photos, that's what I've been using, but embedding images in an alternate way. Did you link directly to the image from within Google Photos? There is this website that will parse out the embedding url for the image, https://ctrlq.org/google/photos/. It is a little bit of work in that you have to run each image you want to upload through this site to generate the image URL, but I'm going to be using this until it screws up on me - like you said any other free option could break or shutdown services for any reason, and I like the ease of the Google albums, and that it's one less account for me to worry about. Just a note if anyone else tries this route - the very end of the embedding link will be ".... w2400". The 2400 represents pixel width of the image. I change this to something more suitable, 880 (which is what I generate my images files at). Also worth mentioning about Google Photos in general: by default photos uploaded to Google Photos are downsized. The way they do it really degrades the quality. I actually just found this out yesterday when I some of my photos were showing some really bad artifacting. After some investigation, there is a setting to keep your uploaded photos in their original quality, but they count against your 15GB data cap (if you keep the "let Google downsize my photo" option, you get unlimited photo storage). I optimize my photos to a reasonable quality/file size from Lightroom, so I can control it instead of letting Google do it. And 15GB... it'll take a whole lot of 125kb photos to reach that. If this system ever breaks I'll come back in and post an update.
  19. It's done! The exhaust nozzle fins were extremely fiddly and I was a bit overzealous using glue with the gun pods, but I'm calling it finished. Thanks for all the comments and encouragement in during the build! Pics are in the gallery, but here's a bonus one:
  20. Hi all, finished up my YF-21 from Macross Plus. Kit is 1/72 from Hasegawa. Thanks for looking, and always fielding critiques and tips for improvement! WIP here:
  21. extremely nice masking job, well done! I hear you about that grey on grey also hah. The good news is if you miss a spot it either won't be obvious, or you can call it weathering!
  22. Thanks for the reminder! Luckily I'm near the end of this build. Actually I would be done, if not for this at the almost last step: That is me probably fat fingering chrome paint onto the side of the fuselage as I painted and installed those lens things. Ugh... luckily none of the paint went on decals, but it affected both sides of the plane. I retouched the areas with the base color (it would have been better if I re-primed, but at this point too lazy) and it's waiting to dry before I slap on the final varnish over the affected areas. That said, this will probably be my last set of WIP photos. A quick step by step of my base - I used the end of a large roll of paper taken from work. This one wasn't too bad, but I have some that are severely warped. To counter this I bought a very rigid 3.2mm styrene sheet to use as the bottom. I measured and cut the square, and then glued in the square tube in the center, along with some supports. I drilled a hole in the center of the paper end then slid it over, inserting the brass rod to make sure it was oriented straight up. This was taken off, then some weight was put in. I didn't have anything lying around the house this time so bought a bunch of washers from the hardware store and superglued them together and to the base. After this, I spread plastic bonder to the entire bottom of the paper end (it's made of high density poly-ethylene), and clamped the heck out of it. I also attempted to use this to fill the hole in the top around the tube. Two days later I went and sanded off the excess styrene around the base, and tube at the top. When I do this again I'll use putty to fill in the hole at the top, as the plastic bonding didn't sand too well. Then give it a spray of black and you're all done. But back to the plane, pin wash was done with black enamel from Mig and then for my final coat I used the trusty Alclad Klear Cote. I have a Matte and a Light Sheen, and thought I wanted something in between, so I mixed it 50/50 and shot it through. It went on pretty well except for the one part where I accidently blasted it, but letting it try and trying again seemed to even it out. And man did this thing become a dust magnet after this. After that it was final details. The sensor lenses are pretty cool because they have spaces drilled into them for you to put in some paint if you want to mimic sensors or whatever they are. I put in Tamiya clear red with a sewing needle tip. These pieces snapped in for the most part (I only had to sand down one), but some take a little pressure to snap in. So much so that I think doing this cracked the paint a bit (seen in the very first picture above under the chrome paint). The areas inside were painted with a Molotow chrome pen to give it some shine. Like I said above I saved sanding the wing navigation light holes to the end because a buildup I read said the plastic pieces didn't fit with the molded in lines. I'm not going to lie, this was really nerve racking, taking a metal file to an almost completed model. In the end it worked out OK, but the lights pretty much lined up with the existing lines and I would not have any issues if I had just cut these out at the beginning. Painted these Tamiya clear red on one side, then green and blue on the other. The clear parts are a real bummer in my copy of this kit - the larger forward wing sensor ones have dents on the them, and the inside of my canopy actually had a gouge in there - unfortunately in the small area that's actually shown through. There was no fixing that one though due to the area (it's in the bowl), so I'll have to live with it. The last detailing step was painting all the metal parts that I didn't want to do before the dull coat. I used Mission Models Burnt Iron, Cold-Rolled Steel, and Vallejo Metal Color for the intake bleedout area, the back of the gun pods, the laser gun barrels on the fusulage, the rear thruster things above the exhaust, and the tabs that will hold the stabilizers. Also painted the stabilizer lights with silver paint, and then clear red where needed. So that's pretty much the end of this WIP. After the dull coat touch up, I'll attach the remaining pieces and break out the nice camera. I'll probably throw a few shots in here, but until then, here she is. Thanks for reading, and Happy Thanksgiving for those that celebrate it!
  23. thanks much Keith! The set from black dog is titled "M1A2 TUSK accessories set" and uses this model in the box art, but it doesn't explicitly write anywhere that it's for the Tiger Model kit. There are a bunch of parts in there, I think I only used 60-70% of the pieces. Actually ScaleMates says it designed for this kit: https://www.scalemates.com/kits/black-dog-t72110-m1a2-tusk-accessories-set--1154343 That said I think most of the parts are generic enough to be used in any Abrams, or even non-US tank. The model included the spare wheel, sprocket, and track link though. Oh, and a little behind the scenes - some of the pieces in the basket are propped up by bits of sprue for better visibility, and not wanting to waste resin pieces in a bottom of the stack where they wouldn't be seen.
  24. Hi all, just finished this one and snapped some pics. I'm a relatively new modeler, and welcome all critiques/criticisms/tips! This is my second tank and first one in the 1/72 scale. This was found for a good price at my local model shop, and having never heard of Tiger Model, I was intrigued by the positive reviews and an awesome buildup of this on YouTube. I don't think I was prepared for how small some of these pieces were, but 95% of them fit perfectly so that was great. The kit includes photoetch mesh for the turret baskets and IR panels. I also bought a black dog resin accessory kit for the stowage. As far as I can tell this is the only 1/72 kit produced by this company, which is a bummer. Many firsts for this kit for me - first 1/72 tank, first time using pigments, first time using resin aftermarket. I built it up as a relatively undamaged tank, with pin washes and pigments as my only weathering. The armored windows may be a touch too green and the vision blocks ended up too dark from what I wanted, but overall I'm pretty happy with this build. This is good practice for the 1/35 one I'll eventually get to. Stynelrez grey primer, Mission Models paints (body color of MMP-038, US Desert Tan Modern 2 FS3446) & Semi-Gloss, AK Interactive Ultra Matte, Tamiya clears for the glass, Ammo by MIG enamels and pigments. And as a little bonus, the tank next to my 1/35 Challenger 2 & 9V battery for size comparisons. Thanks for looking!
  25. thanks for the comments all! decals went on a couple nights ago, intakes attached, and gloss coat sprayed on tonight, but with a couple minor setbacks. The first of which I ripped off part of a decal trying to touch up some paint with masking. I wrestled with how to approach fixing this, as it took off half of two large block numbers. I ended up getting a small pointy brush and trying my best to recreate the missing numbers -- think it came out OK. The second is while glossing tonight I removed a bit of paint in two areas - one in which when I tried removing a hair lodged on the fusulage, and another putting my hand on a still wet part (the Mr. Color Leveling thinner made the underlying coats a little pliable). So I'll need to do a little paint touch up, but I can do that concurrently with my pin wish once the gloss has a chance to cure. Tamiya X-22 with Mr. Color Leveling thinner, roughly 40/60 ratio. It came out pretty thin and I ended up essentially shooting one wet coat, then overspraying with MLT neat afterwards.
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