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gluefinger

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Posts posted by gluefinger

  1. A gloss sky blue base coat I have found puts out a very nice bright tone and by varying your base colors, you can get by with just the aluminum shade of alclad instead of having a range of them. It can get rather expensive to collect.

    Alclad II printed instruction sheet suggested this method. Their website "how to" does not. Gloss white is also a stated suggestion for base color, but of course as you can imagine will leave a very pale look, although still very reflective.

    Practice all you can to get the most gloss first and play around with the three base colors. I use white plastic spoons for this.

    If you are fighting a pebble finish, add more thinners and dust it on until it glosses out. Your paint is drying before it hits the model. Change to a higher flow tip and needle if you can, and get that droplet size larger that's coming out of your brush.

    Placing a small box over your model immediately after spraying will help take care of the pebbles if you fail. The solvents under the flash drying of the paint will help smooth it out as it sits. Slow the drying time with it, and give it a chance to melt back a bit.

  2. Where did you get the decals for the Piper Cherokee 140 and Beechcraft Bonanza? I have several of these kits and only got letters and numbers. Are the decals in the new ones?

    Yes, Steven. They came out of the current Minicraft kits.

    The UV screen came to mind also. I have some really nice Modeller's of Japan chrome foil (the absolute best. amazing stuff. miles apart from bare metal foil.) but I am crazy about showing the interiors.

  3. Doc, Thanks for that link. It is good to see an aftermarket company offer something for these. That might come in handy. Whitey used the registration numbers sheet. Those are handy, especially with these.

    Getting back to painting the figures, I had saved a three part series on how to paint figures if anyone is interested. I'm not sure if I'll paint any people for mine but who knows. I started to study figure painting because of my car building. I have an F1 pit crew set from Tamiya I'll be having to paint. I haven't painted with a brush for a long time so maybe it will be fun.

    The Mooney looks great. I like the paint scheme you chose, Whitey. That bleed under problem can be cured by brushing a coat of Future floor wax down first. It's clear so let it bleed under if it wants to, it is only sealing for the paint. Masking over panel lines is always iffy on the outcome. Either way, yours turned out fine. People looking do not realize how small these planes are to have to work with. A 1/48 warplane seems three times the size of these.

  4. Roll out some Milliput and run a piece of woven nylon cloth over it. You will have to put it in place before it hardens and it will be hard to handle without wiping out the impression but it's possible.

  5. Anytime. I forgot to add the link. Testors paints has a glow in the dark color set of paints. They work okay, I've bought a set before just to play around with. I used it to paint dash knobs on car models. Gives a nice effect for that. You have to start with white first though. I just went to their website and it looks like they have stopped offering the paint set but I've seen them online in hobby stores.

    Just so you are not confused, the glow in the dark sheet I posted is a waterslide type of decal. Others were talking about the thick automotive kind of stickers I think.

    Microscale Decals

  6. Great to see your reply, Andrew. I found a reference to help supplement the people painting guide. :lol:

    cea81666bec6be33260fef869639cbd2.jpg

    Here's the famous painting guide those out of the circle.

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    The windows are a BIG drawback. If used, there's not much sense on spending too much time on the interior. I've even thought of just gluing the windows into all of them, putty the seams and paint them blue like you see on all the mahogany wood models.

    Decals are a problem, but now Minicraft re-issued a couple so that helps. The problem is with the older kits (Mooney and Aero Subaru) that we probably will not see new decals come along. I scanned the Mooney and the Aero Subaru decals and cleaned them up with a photoshop program thinking I might try printing them.

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    In all my searching of thousands of pictures, I've only found one picture that represents the color scheme included in any of the kits and its the Beech.

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  7. I was using collected pictures of the box tops for the wings series from the net, not all were very clear. I do not have but two Bandai released box tops to copy, so I made my own.

    Each one carries the original Bandai kit number in the small weekened wings series logo.

    Now I have clean copies for folder covers and a place to keep the kit number for reference.

    Let me know if you would like copies, I'll send them as individual box top images.

    It is also the only place the wingspan is stated.

    2f042bb127adc37a513254b101e799fe.jpg

  8. If you are looking for out of production items, vintage items it's almost the only option. Never fall for bidding wars. Make one good solid bid and walk away. Wait for your email to find out if you won or lost and commit to doing that. It's the only way I've found to stay sane about it.

  9. If you are looking for out of production items, vintage items it's almost the only option. Never fall for bidding wars. Make one good solid bid and walk away. Wait for your email to find out if you won or lost and commit to doing that. It's the only way I've found to stay sane about it.

  10. I stumbled across a cheap, two dollar play toy with a flashing LED unit inside and thought I would see if it could fit inside a fuselage.

    It looks promising as a flasher unit to build from to add flashing navigational lights. I'm studying the kits now and gathering lighting information on each plane.

    I asked in the general forum about lighting these and received some good pointers here.

    I've discected the instructions for each to work from

    d95c9918e1f5e0018e0c831fe9bf17c3.jpg

  11. Thanks everyone, you all helped get me going in the right direction with all this.

    I've broke up my instruction sheets into two-view drawings to work with and designed a key for myself to map out the lighting. This will help me understand it as a whole what I am up against and should come in handy counting LED's and drawing out the wires.

    I educated myself a bit on LED's and Fiber Optics with videos and shopping. One thing I did learn was to be careful buying color fiber optic strands. I investigated a seller's offer and learned only the strand was externally colored. If one was to cut it, they would find it is clear. The color only comes from the two uncut ends. You are stuck with the length unless you want to weaken the color by cutting one end. It is however handy knowing you don't have to buy clear when buying a mixed bag of colors.

    I will leave things at this and continue my build thread under prop planes on this project. Feel free to drop in anytime.

    My link

    If anyone wants to throw in some ideas have at it, remember I've never tried any of this. I'm still going to try and stay close to using the cheap flash unit as I can. After seeing a few flashing circuits built, this has them beat hands down on simplicity, size and cost even though it is not programmable. It is fine that it stays "toy like" for me.

    Enjoy!

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  12. I've collected a series of small civilian aircraft made by Bandai called Weekend Wing Series if anyone is familiar with them.

    I'm trying my best to get the most fun out of them and thought about lighting them with navigational lights using this.

    I paid less than two dollars for the toy and can't lose that much for trying.

    My idea is to make a powered base, getting rid of the batteries and having to get into the plane to change them. That removes half the battle getting it to size.

    I believe the mini LED's can be desoldered and relocated on their own and then the card can be trimmed some more.

    It can't be trimmed too much because the electrical pattern and chip is imbedded into it like a wafer. Hard to actually see where it is at. Any tips on not destroying this or keeping as unintrusive as possible with working with it is welcome.

    Anyways my idea is to light all the points steady with its own circuit along with this unit being used to add strobe effect. The tiny spring and the plate are the contacts and it lights for about 30 seconds and shuts off. Holding down on it does not make it run steady. Not sure if it's possible to change that.

    I am thinking running large diameter fiber optic to the wingtips. Not sure. Never enterned into trying to light a model like this. All I have is some soldering experience and patience.

    Let me know your ideas how to get the most out of something like this if you can. I'm a nOObie.

    b504a9b7e07b93cbf5562373ba97d8aa.jpg

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    I also need help understanding navigational lights themselves as far as which ones should

    blink and which ones should stay steady for each kit. Is there a general rule of thumb on this?

    79341ed4bd9dbcbc5e45344c3efa635b.jpg

  13. I am one that has encountered a problem finding full color instrument decals. Standard dials no problem, but find me color 1/48 and 1/32 horizion and speed indicators.

    I have a collection of private aircraft in 1/48 that do not include instrument decals and could benefit from them.

    Revell has a small series of gliders in 1/32 scale which comes with excellent panel decals but it would be nice to have a small, aftermarket sheet to rely on in case of mistakes or for experimenting with.

    I don't usually build aircraft and never studied the market until recently and was disappointed there aren't any that I can find. Maybe someone can help.

    The pic is a mix of 1/48 Bandai instructions and 1/32 Revell glider decals. One pic has the instruments printed on clear film and also a placard from Profimodeller detail kit where it is used under the PE. Any tricks to that one?

    Through my searching I can really find only one common manufacture that has a generic sheet of instruments. None of them more than black and white or modern enough to include LCD displays.

    Something to think about if you are out to offer decals. Im sure I wouldn't mind having a sheet around. They are something most home printers can't handle, I don't care what kind.

    cd72efe77019d1d831c49d74a7a47488.jpg

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