I have a couple of bones to pick with this article for beginners. First off, they don’t mention the need for washing plastic models to remove fingerprints and mold parting compound before painting. Beginners won’t know about surface prep and an article for beginners ought to clue them in about it. Then, he starts off the paint job with an airbrush. Beginners don’t own air brushes. By the time a guy gets an air brush he is no longer a beginner. The article would have been more beginner friendly had the writer painted with rattle cans.
He suggests using Tenax to fill any possible gaps at the corners. Dunno about that. Tenax is water thin and ain’t gonna fill much of a gap. If you cannot file the parts to fit right, use putty, like Squadron Green. Far as I can see, dabbing Tenax on the outside of a joint is just asking for glue marks on the “show” side of the model. Later he suggests that Bondene is more active (more likely to cut thru paint) than Tenax. Funny, but I never noticed that much difference between the various brands of plastic welder.
He fails to suggest floors. Easiest way to improve the looks of a multistory structure is to put in the upper floors, so the view in the windows doesn’t show a yawning cavern reaching down to the basement. Make the floors out of styrene, cardboard, sheetwood, anything. The improvement in looks is well worth the small effort to floor the joint.
It’s good to run articles for beginners, we need to bring in newcomers just to maintain the hobby, let alone grow it. This beginner’s article could have been a lot more beginner friendly.
Yeah, I thought the same thing when they pulled out an airbrush to do the painting.
As I recall, though, this kid had “window treatments” which looked like curtains over a solid black surface. This would be an effective view-block, eliminating any visibility into the interior.
I don’t remember if that was written by an MR staff member, or an outsider, but if they don’t write it themselves they have to go with the outside world sends them Maybe one of us should document our work next time we put together a simple kit, and send it to them.
I to would like to see more articles that use rattle paint cans, hand brushing techniques, and other basic stuff that a typical rookie/beginner would use/do (and yes I know that "typical" and levels of rookieness/beginner is subjective). An article such as the one mentioned herein would be perfect for just such a thing. Keep it simple and think like a rookie. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the article. But I remember when I first started building structures just getting the walls together without them looking like an earthquake just ran through the layout was a major feat…[:$].
dstarr: I agree with you, people tend to forget the chain of events theory, when describing something they seem to forget a few things, always appreciate a forum members response to a question with "and don’tforget to- - - - - -" it is gratefully appreciated, also remembered are the members who have accumulated $250,000 worth of specific tools and assume you have the same, oops !
Right you are. I missed it clean. I expect bylines to be below the title and above the first sentence of the article. Like in regular publications.
And there is one other thing Cody fails to mention. He applies a wash of light color for mortar, a nice touch… But he doesn’t mention that you have to wipe it off the surface of the brickwork before it dries hard, just leaving the lines between the bricks full of mortar colored paint.
I figured this out on my own by dumb luck a couple of months ago while building the walthers sand house kit. I used a paper towel with some odorless paint thinner (odorless thinner didnt remove much of the red paint that I used for the bricks) on it.
Yes Cody does love his airbrush, and to be fair, he is very talented with it, although I thought it was odd that in the Tony Koester cover article about weathering a steam loco in 7 minutes by NOT using an airbrush, they had Cody follow the project for the key photo and he DID use one on the drivers which looked quite different from what TK was trying to describe. I also think back to the many weathering tips over the years where for generic weathering Cody, and other MR staffers, would use railroad specific colors from Floquil and PolyScale where they could have used any old gray or any old brown. I bet they wish they had that paint back now in case they actually need L&N gray or whatever.
Even for those of us with airbrushes and paint booths, it is the bother of cleanup that makes us look for alternatives including, where appropriate, rattle cans. Maybe if we had the nice clean and spacious workshop at Kalmbach we’d feel better about doing lots of airbrushing. One secret in my experience to making rattle cans work is to “waste a lot of paint” – that is, start painting well before the work at hand, keep painting past it, make broad swaths and don’t maximize the use of every droplet of paint by concentrating the can too close to the work so that the paint beads up or the coat is overthick. And yes, hold the can upside down and spray out the residue when you are done. I used to be too frugal with my rattle can painting and suffered the consequences. Indeed in some ways it wasn’t until I started airbrushing that I truly realized how best to use a rattle can. Another secret has to do with shaking the can. I used to give the can the same vigorous shakes that I give cans of Foamy shave cream. Now I time it for a full two minutes of shaking and the difference in paint smoothness and thin coating of paint is remarkable.
The way you described,staring to paint before you reach the surface and continue after,back and forth,horizontally, is exactly,how you would paint,a full-size,truck,or car.