Starship Modeler Discussion Forums

The nice thing about the sanding sticks you get at the hobby shop is that you can wet sand with them. Not so with the nail files. Get them wet and they just get soggy and the sand falls off.

Just Plain Al wrote:At the shop I work in we machine bearing surfaces for prosthetic legs from Delrin.

Do you use natural delrin or delrin AF, (delrin impregnated with teflon)? I'd think that delrin AF would be superior for bearing blocks, but I don't know what sort of restrictions you might have for prosthesis.

I think you got your decimal one spot too far to the right. 0.20 is more than 3/16", and 0.40 is more then 3/8". Did you mean .020 and .040? The reason I mention it is because if you call USPlastics and accidentally order a sheet of styrene nearly a half inch thick, they will send it to yo...

From what I have read here and other places, building a ventilation system that does not go outside is a pipe dream. You'll find contraptions that use buckets and supposedly filter out the fumes but everything that I have read in previous discussions says they don't work and the room ends up stinki...

But you have a killer paint booth Robb! I'll bet you could spray monkey ebola in that thing without batting an eye.

That worked pretty well Harry. I would expect those old, thick panel lines to cause trouble, but the pics clearly show that the decals snugged down nicely over them. I've always been afraid to try this method, but I may give it a shot.

Johnny beat me to it.

The only difference I can think of, I usually wash white metal in vinegar before priming. With plastic I just use soapy water. Also, plastic tends to develop a slight static charge, especially when sanding on it. So to keep dust and cat hair from being attracted to the surface, I'll always wash it b...

The indoor filter in the bottom half of Pat's article here works really well. It eliminates the need to vent outside. We built the test article in a hotel room and sprayed straight lacquers into it, with no smells or fumes escaping at all.

Ummm... Spam?

I've also successfully airbrushed Mr. Surfacer 500. You have to thin it way down, like 70% lacquer thinner, (or Mr. Color levelling thinner). But it works in a pinch. (It was 2:00am, I was all out of Mr. 1200).

I think it's lacquer thinner and bacon grease. 'Cos you know, everything is better when it's cooked in bacon grease.

I think I know how to prevent this, coat them in Future. But I don't know how to fix them if they're already on the model. Typically you can use bright sunlight to bleach decals by hanging the sheet in a warm, sunny window for a couple months. But I don't think that would work too well with decals a...

That's a good idea Roketeer, I'll use that!

The walls of PVC pipe don't hold glue or paint very well. Which makes sense, you don't want, er... stuff ... sticking to your plumbing. Fortunately there is a fix. The way they make PVC non-sticky is they bathe the plastic in, (I believe), fluorine gas, which chemically treats the surface. Sand thro...

Interesting. The instructions I found on the web didn't mention this nor do I see it in their pictures: http://www.swannysmodels.com/Salting.html http://www.scalemodelguide.com/guide/painting/salt-weathering/ http://www.aeroscale.co.uk/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req...

My guess is the salt is pulling the water out of the paint, causing it to cure unevenly. The good news is, this is part of what the salt method is supposed to do. The reason to use salt rather than, say, peanut butter or dirt, is because salt does weird things with the paint. Don't look at it as a b...

Delrin is in the same family of plastics as teflon and polypropylene. It is specifically designed to be non-reactive, and requires special glues to stick to it at all. You could make a good CA bottle out of it though. If you are looking for a plastic that machines well, and can be painted and glued ...

What exactly do you mean by "effects coats?" Sometimes I'll put on a clear satin coat, tinted with oil paints. Just dip a microbrush in a tube of oil paint, white or green or brown, whatever you need to tint the model with, and swirl it around in an airbrush cup with a few drops of clear....

There may not be any atmospheric haze in space, but I would disregard that. If you are looking to add visual cues for scale, tamping down bright colors by greying or bluing them down is a good trick. Sometimes artistic license is better than strict adherence to realism.

Your list is pretty similar to mine. After base coat I'll put down several effects coats. Then after decals I go with another clear gloss coat. You wrote decal sealer, which I guess is the same thing. Maybe some more effects coats after that. Then washes, all kinds of washes, followed by another sea...

That depends. Who were the "two they discussed"?

There is a sticky on this subject in the finishing forum, four pages and counting: http://www.starshipmodeler.net/talk/viewtopic.php?t=15835 Read through that, then experiment like a mad man. Using washes is dangerous though. No, not because it'll ruin your model, (although you'll think it did the f...

You can try wrapping the nose in tape, overlapping the grey area a bit. Then draw the demarcation onto the tape with a good, sharp pencil. Pull the masking tape off, and cut along the mark, (maybe using a french curve as a not-so-straight-edge). Reapply the tape, and paint away. Another trick is to ...

^^ What he said. ^^

Are you looking for decimal equivalents? All the drill sizes you mention, up to 1/2", can be found in a fractional size drill index, listed exactly as you wrote them. (The larger sizes, 9/16", 5/8" and 3/4", won't come in an index, but can be bought separately). You can look on a...

I try to build my models so they can stand up to a good cleaning. Too often in the past I've had problems where even a little soapy water will cause the decals to lift or flake away, small parts to fall off, and delicate weathering to be obliterated. Ideally I'd like to be able to completely submerg...

This sort of thing is why I got interested in building models in the first place.

Call it The Rusty Fork of the Inquisitor, registry number 332.

I'll second Laserfire. Matt's work is very good, and reasonably priced.