By chance did you try any plastic welder type adhesive. I use Same Stuff that I get from the modeling tool store I can' t name. Small drop and it flows by capillary action. It contains Methylene Chloride which of course California doesn't like.
has been humid enough here the last few days to chew the air (supposed to have T-storms all tonight, tomorrow, and into Sat) but I wanted to get going on this apartment kitbash since there's so many parts and I need to start it before I can figure out a couple of the specifics of using both together. Grabbed a big box from work and a couple of scrap 1x's, picked up a $4 blister of screw hooks, and shazam - indoor paint booth lol And by indoor, I mean against the wall on the side of the basement I haven't done anything with yet! Primer on the first round is drying - there's probably 3x more whole sprues to shoot yet.
Greenmax did a really good job of making these apartment models borderline idiot-proof, there's just a bajillion little pieces - every railing, every window, etc. I think it will go together just fine when I get there, but between paint and prep and modifying stuff since putting it together the way the instructions say to is no fun, the irony is I'm going to have probably 20hrs of prep for maybe 20 minutes of actual assembly Took me a few, but decided the best way to light this thing would be through the stairway, but the staircase pieces rest in a groove so I have to keyhole out around the other side. You want to talk about slow going! Still, got one done finally and it will look really good so totally worth it. I did manage to skip the blade of the Xacto and bury it about halfway into my finger on my left hand, really freaked me out and took me a good 5min and a styptic pencil to figure out whether we were going to the ER or not lol but is all good, bandaged up and gtg. Still stings a bit, but rub some dirt, eh? HAHA
tried to watch some TV but found myself wandering back in here working on this Actually got a lot more done than I'd planned to today - if I had some plastic putty to fill those mounting tab holes and seams on the top part I'd be taping and shooting color and painting all the railings right now! ..have done the corn starch and super glue route before, but I really don't want to spend the next 4hrs sanding it lol so will just wait until I can pick up some Milliput or something similar. Mocked it up in place as-is and after seeing that am really happy I put both of these together instead of two small buildings - lots of extra steps but am digging it!
Uugh. 3 days to get Milliput - the 2-part, at that - in to the local WalMart, 5 to get Vallejo putty from Amazon. Is a 33mi drive each way to closest HS or even a Hobby Lobby, so looks like am waiting a week to move forward on this one. Am not going to drive 90+mins round trip with gas at $4/gal just to fill in a few holes. I have a couple other kits I can start, but I dislike leaving things half-done. Am still waiting on a bunch of interior details for my station so I already have one incomplete project, I would much rather finish one before moving on to the next. Just how I'm wired. Biggest thing, though, is I really want to get these models put together first because I am not the biggest fan of them. Most prebuilds are a little too -meh- for me, but I tend to "get ideas" and go off-script way too often for anything made to go together in a specific manner. I find the scratch stuff so much easier because if you mess something up, oh well - cut another piece and do it again, and a better idea than what I originally had always seems to present itself in the middle of it. Plastic models look great when finished, I just tend to get itchy when they don't go together easily because there's usually so little wiggle room to compensate. I completely molested these apartments as I went HAHAHA but most don't allow for anywhere near that kind of freedom. So, yeah - am pushing to get them all done at once so I can get back to being creative. Or sloppy, whichever way you choose to put it!
Try your local auto parts store. They should have some tubes of scratch filler putty. It never shrinks and is easy to work with. I prefer it to the other stuff, had some bad experiences with the 'green' stuff...
I grabbed a tube of Oatey plastic putty yesterday from work, same basic premise. I think there's a couple of spots that will still show, even after sanding, but the building will be so busy I don't think it will matter. Show me a 10-story apt building that is perfect anyhow, eh? Washed off the pieces and re-shot a new primer coat this morning - might do a second on my lunch just for good measure - then I can start painting and putting it together tomorrow since am off all day. That's where the REAL fun starts, a 3-color scheme and aaaaaallllll those railings. And window bars. And gutters. And steps. And...
I tried peeing on it, turns out that's just for jellyfish stings Jokes aside, though, super glue probably would have made it worse because it would have just pooled up inside it. It's not a large cut, maybe 1/3 the circumference of my index finger, it's just pretty deep and took a while to get it to stop bleeding because is such a clean slice. Occupational hazard of always using a new blade, I guess, but at the same time was doing something we all know better than to do - had a large piece to cut and rather than do a little at a time like you're 'sposed to I tried to do it all at once.
Aight, so before I either mess this up or do way more work than I need to, somebody tell me if I'm smoking crack out of a light bulb here... For the front of my building, I want to paint the right and left side one color, the center portion a second, and the stairwells, building sides, and back a third. My plan is to shoot the two sides, then mask them. Then shoot the center, then mask it. Then shoot the rest. Will the paint come off if I paint it then tape over it? Should I shoot a clear coat over it before masking it? I know it's called painter's tape for a reason, but we're talking about such a thin coat of it from the airbrush am afraid the adhesive might take the paint with it, even with a couple of primer coats down for adhesion. Just trying to avoid stripping ALL of it back off and starting over, would be a definite Lou Ferrigno moment.
It *shouldn't* but if you have a scrap piece of similar plastic I would try it there. I've heard that Tamyia masking tape masks the best in terms of sealing the edge and not taking existing paint off though I have never tried it myself. Next would be the green Frog tape and then the 3M blue stuff.
In house painting, the trick is to smear a thin bead of paintable calk on the to-be-painted edge/side of the masking tape, and then paint. This may or may not work with models, but it works wonders on house trim/field painting, keeping paint from bleeding under the edge of the tape while releasing the tape cleanly during removal. I've never tried it when painting models that need masking, so YMMV.
Use the good masking tape, but then paint a strip of the masked color on the edge of the tape to seal it. Then once dry, paint the color of the section you are working on. Good luck!
I do a fair amount of repainting on coaches and locomotives-I recommend shooting your first color, sealing with a gloss, masking tape on top of that, and then shooting your next color. Repeat as required. I use Tamiya masking tape, it’s good, but why take the risk of getting fresh thinner into you first color if you don’t have to? If you need to weather (airbrush, powders, chalks, etc) anyway you’re going to have to shoot a dull coat eventually-so that will kill the gloss. That’s what I’ve done here: first I dabbed a little bit of green under the exhaust stack to represent newer paint worn through to the original color. Then airbrushed white to fade. Then a dirty brown wash to bring out details. Gloss between each layer. Weathering powder on top. Sealed with flat. Total repaint here, first coat was silver on top of the original paint job. Glossed it, masked off the silver stripe to protect it, then shot the blue color. Glossed it, then decals. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
this is exactly what am doing, except I don't have gloss clear so will be extra matte, I guess. Am trying to decide if I want to shoot a final coat of really watery blackcoat to get the effect of water stains running down the building anyways - since there are so many windows, there's tons of places for rain to gather and run off of. Cross that bridge when I get to it, am still trying to get the color to mix like I want it so far this morning HAHA That FSRR looks incredible btw - really well done!
