Starship Modeler Discussion Forums

Sounds like a lovely idea to me. Plus, I have a lot of experience making and unfolding papercraft models, so I could contribute my own tips and tricks.

This really needs to be pinned. Lots of useful information here!

Ooooh, good to know! I looked at Reddit alongside asking here, and some people have suggested soaking in alcohol for 2 hours to get rid of the lacquer. Is that very effective in your experience?

Thanks for all the tips! I think I'll try bleach. I have been having success with Easy Off, but it hasn't been that good at getting rid of the lacquer undercoat on its own for some of these parts, AMT parts, in particular... some of these parts like the grilles and hubcaps are really stubborn with t...

So, I have a stack of car parts I got in a massive box some rando left at the model store several months ago. I've gotten the rest of the parts cut from the sprues and sorted, and I'd like to do the same for these. But I've had poor success in the past with stripping the chrome of chromed parts. I c...

You didn’t file down into the diode itself, did you? There’s no exposed metal? (Go ahead and laugh, I managed to do that once.) Lol, no. I learned that lesson the hard way too many times! It's not that the LEDs don't light up, it's that they're noticeably dimmer than they were before modification. ...

The LEDs were flat to begin with.

I bought some super bright (10,000mcd) LEDs for my Millennium Falcon's engines, and they didn't fit in the space I'd created for the circuit boards, so I used a sanding stick to file them down to a lower height. When I did this they were dimmer, so I polished them back to crystal clear, but they're ...

I bought some silicone spray to coat masters with before molding them as I've been having tearing issues even with baby powder. Being the cheap-skate that I am, I was trying to get away with something inexpensive so I picked up a can of this for $12: https://www.amazon.com/Sprayway-SW946-Silicone-Sp...

Ah man... my condolences to his family for their loss.

I'm going to give Molotow a try once I get to a position where I can afford it. I like Alclad Chrome, but it's really difficult to get a mirror finish with it, and some parts really need a mirror finish.

So I'm working on a set of engine parts and I've base-coated them with MM metalizer lacquers. I am working them into a really nice metallic sheen, over which I plan on putting on some weathering in the form of a grime pass using Tamiya acrylics and an oil scrub wash that's been thinned with odorless...

Okay, so that leads into another question. After cutting it, what's the best way to get it to match the curve? I thought about taping it to the side of the cockpit cone and then running hot water over it, but after doing some tests I found that it was tricky to get a good temperature for this. If it...

Is there a good trick to fitting sheets of acetate to curved window frames? I am working on my DeAgostini Falcon and the windows in the kit are atrocious, toylike garbage. I'm trying to cut panes of clear acetate to fit them, but it's hard to get a good fit and it's starting to test my patience. I w...

Is it feasible to protect a Bandai kit's plastic from enamel thinners, lacquers and other known harsh chemicals by first coating the model in acrylic primer or clear varnish? I'd like to think that it would, but those who have worked with paints more than I have probably would be able to tell better.

I have a TON of detail on this turbolaser tower I'm modeling which will get knocked off if I don't use a good cloth of some kind to wipe down the model after a wash. Since this is a one-off made from thousands of tiny paper parts that could be ripped away from the model if I use something that is to...

I don't mind a little math. I'm not sure that HDPE or MDPE are used in toys, at least not the Hasbro/Kenner ones I'm trying to mimic. The hard plastic responds to plastic welder, so I think it might be ABS. I'm not sure what the soft, more rubbery plastic is made from, though.

The thing is, I'm wanting to make a Star Wars toy circa 1995 or so, and my idea is to build a master out of styrene, then cast the parts in resin to give them the proper tint (including those weird black specks floating around in the gray) with the poky bits cast in that rubbery plastic they used fo...

So I've been googling this, but I'm not sure I'm getting the right information. At least, the info I've been getting has been confusing, to say the least. I'm wanting to make a toy starship, right down to the kind of plastic used, but lacking an injection molding machine, I was thinking I could find...

You can do some experiments to test this idea, but I think the effect would be too unnoticeable to be worth all the effort. LEDs would make better sense, and there's plenty of room inside the engine bay for whole LEDs to power each engine for a really nice and bright effect.

I'd like to make a space freighter in large scale, and I need a source for large cylinders that have round caps. I'd prefer spherical caps, but spheroid and "rounded" are acceptable. I'd like to stay away from kit parts to save money, but if you find something that'll work for an enormous ...

I have decanted Rustoleum before, and it works just fine for me right out of the bottle with no thinner. YMMV, of course.

Interesting choice going with wood. I'm curious to see where you're going to mount the PC bits in the mech.

If it were me, I would use my drill press to hollow out most of the interior of the hammerhead, then after that I would rough-cut the bridge window and file it open. Finally, I would use my dremel to carve out more and more of the interior, using the window as a guide for how much resin is left to c...

One mixture I've been using for a while for really small styrene parts is to mix a 1:1 ratio of acetone and lacquer thinner. I read this in Jamie's blog on building the K'Tinga, and it works really well for joining delicate parts that would liquefy using something like MEK or Flex-i-file's welder.

I have my kit parts sorted by type: aircraft, cars, armor, warships, sci-fi, Star Trek, Star Wars, miscellaneous. Each of these is subdivided into part types: armor - long bits, armor - medium bits, armor - small bits, armor - tread links, armor - clear bits, armor - figures, armor - hulls. I also h...

Great build showing just how easy it can be to scratchbuild something from styrene and a few kit parts!

One of my favorite go-to "low-temp" welders is actually lacquer thinner. This stuff is amazing because it'll bond small parts without liquifying them like Tenax. I like to use it when welding thin styrene strips and tiny kit parts because there's no risk of it marring the sharp edges and i...

I tend to switch between using Bondo auto filler and liquified styrene. Often what I will do is stretch some sprue after heating it, then finding a section that's a hair bigger than the seam. I lay it down on the seam and brush on a liberal amount of very "hot" solvent, usually just plasti...

Actually... no. I hadn't thought of that. :oops: Since the interior circuitry is inaccessible there's not much else you can do to troubleshoot this problem. One other thing you can do with things as they are now is check the current from the batteries and transformer to the circuits by putting the D...