Starship Modeler Discussion Forums

I would never bother with an enamel primer. That's just weird and I don't know who would make that (Testors?). Lacquers (whether they're lacquer or acrylic lacquer, whatever) will be the strongest and hottest. Use a lacquer-based primer such as Tamiya Surface Primer or Mr. Surfacer. Here in Japan, e...

It's true that many Japanese products are of better quality than let's say Revell or Monogram's stuff and many small European manufacturers, but saying no crap exists in Japan sounds a bit condescending. I wasn't talking about models. Certainly crappy models are made in Japan, and I have built some...

Thanks! I will do that. Here in Japan, we have these insulated "magic pots" in which you can fill with boiling water in the morning and it's ready to make hot tea all day long. I was using that a lot when I was cutting up my soft vinyl figure.

Hi, I'm having good results working on the Devil Hunter Yohko soft vinyl figure I am currently working on (you can follow the build in the Figures section). Soaking the parts in warm water allows me to cut the parts very easily with an X-Acto blade. I recently scored a Galaxy Fraulein Yuna PVC figur...

I can't click the link because I'm at work and Photobucket is blocked, but I can imagine what you want to do. I'll tell you that Tamiya has recently came out with a new masking tape intended for curved surfaces. I recently used it to mask around the shuttle bay door on my PL 1:1000 Enterprise Refit ...

Gaia Notes is 100% compatible with GSI Mr. Color products, which are acrylic lacquers. These are made especially for modeling, and they target the figure modelers too. People earlier in this thread said that they'd work well on my vinyl figure, and I am not surprised. With others talking about using...

To give an update, I have used Mr. Surfacer as well as Gaia Notes white primer on the vinyl kit and I have had no problems at all so far. I'm nearly ready to start painting the kit.

I've no experience with the Neo, but I did own a Paasche airbrush when I lived in the States. I only hated the hideously noisy Paasche compressor, and I'm sure my neighbors hated it even more. Sounds like your new compressor is nice. But as far as my siphon-fed, dual-action Paasche airbrush went, I ...

I tend to prefer lacquer paints. Then again, I live in Japan, where using lacquers is more commonplace, whereas it seems that Western modelers have an aversion to lacquers. What is with Tamiya gloss acrylics, anyway? My YouTube friend in Canada, RebelsAtCloudNine, was trying to use gloss acrylics on...

I've been using the same bottle of Future since 2011 or so, back from when I used to live in the USA. Its consistency is starting to change over the years, so I find it necessary to thin it with some alcohol a bit because it's becoming a bit too thick. When it was brand new bottle, though, I had no ...

Fascinating. I did not know Gunze had two different white surfacers. I only have the Base White. I will need to find the other. Unfortunately, Mr. White Surfacer 1000 only comes in a spray can. Tamiya also has a white primer in a spray can, and it comes in "Fine." The reason I bought Mr. ...

As Robb said. Definitely because its so thin. That's a good consistency for spraying though so keep it that way. Weird. So I suppose it is somehow different from a regular primer if I can't get as good of coverage in one application. On GSI Creos's Mr. Hobby website, it lists both Mr. White Surface...

I recently thinned Mr. Base White 1000 with Mr. Color Leveling Thinner and used it as a primer on a Yamato Mecha Collection kit. I could shoot it through my airbrush easily enough, but it didn't seem to whiten up the darker plastics well enough. Maybe I over-thinned it. Has anyone tried this before?...

I'll stick with Mr. Surfacer. Here in Japan, it is widely available and there is no Krylon and other such brands available here. I have seen Vallejo only on a few occasions, in model shops in the Tokyo area. It is possible to get stuff like Vallejo, Alclad, Humbrol enamels, and Model Master acrylics...

Walmart sells an acrylic final coat in rattle cans PLAID brand name; blue& white label in the CRAFT section. They have gloss and flat, $5...m i g h t work... Heh. We actually have Walmart here in Japan. It's called Seiyu, but the store clerk uniforms still say "Walmart" on the back. I...

Thanks, everyone, for the feedback. I still need to finish several other models before I get around to starting the vinyl kit I'd like to make this year. You'll probably see it eventually in the Figures subforum.

I've heard that about oil-based paints, actually. Even if you paint them on top of safe paints, the vinyl somehow still permeates and there is no real barrier.

Maybe... for a primer, if you can't find something like Krylon (in a can, which is basically acrylic) I would just spray a base coat of an acrylic paint and go from there. Krylon is certainly not available here in Japan. I suppose I could go with a base coat of Tamiya flat white or something for a ...

Update! I opened up my recently purchased, never used bottle of Model Master acrylic Blue Angels Yellow, thinned it to the consistency of milk with Tamiya lacquer thinner, and sprayed it on a spoon. It's a gloss paint, and it turned out FANTASTIC! EDIT: Okay, after I gave it over a half hour to dry,...

I had some Dirty Pair anime figures that would sweat stickiness. They were likely vinyl, but I don't know. I sold them. I didn't care for them anway, since their boobs were too big. On top of that, Yuri's boobs were bigger than Kei's, which is not how it's supposed to be. ANYHOW, What I will do afte...

I was just reading this article on the SSM site about building vinyl kits. It says that I must prime vinyl with acrylic in order for the kit to accept enamels and lacquer paints. I don't know of any acrylic-based primers. Primers made by Tamiya Mr. Hobby, and Gaia Notes are all lacquer-based. It was...

I was working on a Bandai mecha model from Martian Successor Nadesico, and I decided to paint the rifle Model Master Acrylic Gun Metal. I thinned it with Tamiya lacquer thinner and airbrushed it. I've had this bottle of paint around for about 10 years now, so I don't know if it's because it was old ...

In my (limited) experience, you won't get a good match. For example, I had used Tamiya's semigloss black spray can on something, and I used their acrylic semigloss black for touching up. They were both semigloss black, but the acrylic had a different sheen to it. So I just sprayed some into a paint ...

Here is an informative article on restoring old decals on oldmodelkits.com located here. It makes mention of JT Graphics, too!

Last night I took a spare bottle and thinned some Mr. Surfacer 1200 with Mr. Leveling Thinner and primed two Yamato Mecha Collection kits I was working on. It's fantastic! I've recently started moving away from using rattle can surfacers, using Gaia Notes' black and silver primers fairly recently (g...

Good idea. Thanks. I'm not sure how to go about doing that, since I'll have to learn the terminology to even know what to search for. But I will keep that in mind.

You know, I was worried about how to find a breadboard in Japan, not knowing what the word was in Japanese. So I just looked up "breadboard" on the Japanese Wikipedia, and it turns out that they just call it a "breadboard" (converted into the simplistic Japanese phonetics in a pr...

Thanks for the reference! Strobes are also of interest to me.

Yeah, I've met the guy in person actually. He gave me the Rick Deckard head he sculpted himself for his Blade Runner Spinner project. He did such a fantastic likeness of Harrison Ford. Sometimes I wonder if he's one guy or actually a group of guys. I'll take a look at his site when I am at home (blo...

Not too long ago I was in a similar position to you! I got a bunch of cheap leds off of ebay, a pack of various resistors and a solderless circuit board and just youtube'd my way through it. It seems super complicated at first but once you get the hang of it it's not too bad. I still can't do anyth...