[/QUOTE]sooyewguan Sep 5 2007, 05:43 PM
whats the different between top coat and clear coat tin spray from mr hobby ?


Hi Sooyewguan, as i know the blue one is oil base and the gray can is waterbase. I dont have much experience in this matter usually i airbrush coating. However, once i use thewaterbase (gray can) coating on top of a very thin layer of gunze acrylic paint, the coat melted the paint. so i can visually see dots on my kit. The top paint is white, and the underneath paint was gray. So the whole thing was like with gray pocky dots all over it.
Since then, i never use can spray coating.

Hope that helps. Also please lemme know after you try it. I m curious to know too.

This post has been edited by rayloke: Sep 7 2007, 04:19 PM

Oops! r28, you'r right! bad me..... he he wrong info

Hi, I got a problem similar to noob4life's. Am using Gunze's primer which have not much of a problem with my tamiya paint and solvent when i airbrush. I use to use tamiya's primer and the primer seems to react a bit too fast with my tamiya paint+solvent when i airbrush on top of it. Any of you "Sifus" have this problem. Would very much want to stick back to tamiya's primer (Coz i stay near 1 utama & also find tamiya's primer cheaper). Didnt test on it cause dont want to buy another can and later found out got problem.....

fyire: When i apply paint on to tamiya primer, sometime i notice the primer start to "melt". Result, i got uneven surface or worse, the gray color primer started to mix with the paint. Especially the paint is mix with a higher % of solvent/thinner and retarder.

leongtat: Hi, scale model(the more traditional way of saying it) is not snap fit, as you've already know. I think most important is your planning. But a OBB assembly is almost a must if you wanna do any planing. Usually my way is to use masking tape and hold the whole thing together first then will plan which will have to be done first. Like cockpit for example usually i will color it first before i putty the body.

Guess u r right, half way assemble half painting, cause there are certain parts you can't airbrush nor paint with great accuracy if you have already glue the whole thing together - like the engine, unless you do some modification, cause some model your cant put the engine in once you have glued the body. assemble the whole kit first, carefully study the whole thing, plan out your steps! Of course for the first few kits you might have this problem when you r doing half way and realise, "Sh*t, i shud have painted this part first kinda thing. The more experience you have the easier you will find yourself in planning such steps.

Happy modelling!

mark setter and mark softerner for water slide decal, not so suitable for dry transfer.....

i use a pin vise bought from hardware or electrical store and a needle stolen from my mom. cost me less than RM10.

This's info for people looking for cheaper alternative

If wanna do like mirror like shine, basically sand, polish, and compound are all the same concept. just the material used and the fineless of the material.

please do SAND the surface before! so when u apply primer and paint you already achieve like 50% gloss with smoother surface. then top coat, mebbe a few layer so that the top coat is thick enough. why? because after that u will need to check any big particles popping out with means the surface is not smooth enough. if u find it really not so mooth, use sand paper with water to lightly sand it. with the thick top coat, u wont hurt the paint below (B careful though). if no big problem, then use compound.

use sand paper is to spped up the whole thing in case after the top coat, it is really not shiny. if only use compound, can also, might just take you years to sand of the uneven surface, and the more time u spend working on your surface, the longer time u r exposing yourself to the risk of creating damage to your paint.

just remember: sand, polish, compound basically are the same thing. if u understnad it u wont be confused about which go first and such questions!

P/s: from my experience, if u notice some minor scratches mebbe because of the polishing cloth too tough or anything, i use those cd scratch recover fluid to cover them up. Of course if the scratches are too huge, u cant do that. if the scratches is not as deep as the top coat, can either top coat again and re do the whole wet sand, polish, compund thing. but if scracthes are already deep till the paint level, then the best bet is to re do the paint again.

Final stage is, if u r rich enough to get one of those modelling wax, apply a bit (this one no need much force) and ur kit will be shinny! Normal car wax i havent tried before, so dare not recommend.

This post has been edited by rayloke: Apr 22 2008, 12:53 PM

in a way it's right. because top coat is transparent so can afford to do it thicker compare to paint before the result is really ugly. secondly if we want to sand or compound or do anything on surface, better do on a transparent top coat than paint. Compare any slight accident on top coat to accident on paint, top coat is easier to safe. anything happen to paint meaning gotta get rid of old layer and redo a gain. that's hell!

sand paper can get rid of bigger uneven areas, make it smoother if compare to a very rough surface. but if you look very closely, after sanding actually the surface is also not smooth enough to be shinny or reflective. in fact sand paper will still create very fine scratches, even if u r using like 2000 point sand paper.

that's why compound cream comes into picture. it's very fine and most importantly, it's liquid or semi liquid. meaning the force u put to "sand" using compound is more evenly distributed. so it is like an "overall" sanding, a more even force. after compounding, actually there're still extremely tiny scratches, so small till you cant really see them. so the surface is "almost" like mirror kinda smooth and the reflection is not distorted that much (meaning u almost can see very clear reflection of yourself).

The final layer of wax is actually to further cover those tiny uneven surface caused by compounding.

wow that's really fine! it's like paper only!

Btw, where did you get yours?

I think polish each part individually is very good habit! regarding layers of top coat, when talk about ab, normally 3 to 4 layers. depends on how good the fundamental paint work is. Sometimes when the base / surface work was very good, i think 2 layer is sufficient to create pretty good effect, a bit risky though.

If u use spray can, since generally it tends to spray thicker than AB, i really dare not say how many layers. just make sure u polish each layer as good as you can. also make sure the details are still there.

ic ic thanks

it depends what kinda level of completion you wanna achieve lor.....

The key word here is bond, and not glue. melting the plastic and let them bond is safe from glue being aged or an chemical reaction when u apply paint. Model is not really a toy. when u r constructing a kit, u dont play with it instanstly. if u use cement the correct way, the bonding is much stronger than using super glue.

Unfortunately there is no such product. Gloss is all about skill and techique and patience. Is a combination of various steps, products, and techniques.

Actually u can use water! most people tend to use thinner cause it melts the paint faster and also dry faster. Sometimes i use water to mix acrylic paint too. mr hobby is much easier to dilute than tamiya paint but thinner mix the paint the fastest.

Pro: u will get extremely slow drying time, which sometimes is good, especially for gloss finish. also tends to remind you to do your painting slower(be patient fren). Also can use water to wash, very cheap!

Con: slow drying time, so u cant do anything for quite a long period of time. i usually wait one day plus. Also if u spray too much, or didnt apply putty, or even the paint is too thin, the surface tension will make the the paint form droplets.

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Added on May 7, 2008, 11:35 amone way to test whether seam line is properly done or not: Close your eyes, use your finger nail lightly scracth thru the surface. If u still can feel and know where the seam line is with your eyes closed, then is not properly done

This post has been edited by rayloke: May 7 2008, 11:35 AM

Yeah sometimes before u prime, u still can see the something like a seamline; but if after priming is not visible, then is ok.

Btw, for small line, many times i dont use putty. very troublesome to dilute everytime, also putty a little hard to sand. Normally i use primer to cover. So much easier to sand.

Buy one bottle of primer (Not the can spray type, bottle type) use toothpick and apply on the plastic.

dunno how to answer you le, it's like "how to use masking tape properly?"

At least tell us what u want to use it for. Or is this your question? If it was, then pla plate can be use , when cut to desire shapes, to add details to your kits, scratch build something totally new or cant found in your box of model, adding extra shapes to your models, giving supports to extra parts of your model etc etc.

It's just like a piece of plywood to a carpenter. U can imagine what he can use the pla plate for.

Actually Dengeki Hobby showed a few times already, with photos. Together with cement and top coat, you can almost make the seamline invisible. Use different sand paper, like 600, 800, 1000, 1200, 2000. scratches on the surface also will be very fine, then you use top coat to further cover them up.

Then as 300078 said, do weathering effect to further distract viewers' attention from realising sand scracthes and such. Actually it can be done really nicely, but is not easy job. Imagine you can achieve kits that appeared in magazine evenwithout the use of AB. For benchmark, usually i think the time u use for weathering is around 3 times longer than the time u use to snap fit.

he he cheapo like me use hardware shop type. usually i use 600, 800 (mostly), 1200. 2000 (for gloss finish)

To even soften the sanding effect, you can try wet sand. meaning, add some water on the surface then sand. The water in between sand paper and your model kit serve as a buffer. so scracthes will will finer and less likely to make mistake like pressing too hard. it will take longer but is good effect.

I think the main thing is just not thick, but clean should be the word. Some like panel lining to be thick and black, like cartoon/comic/anime style. However, from the pictures, one is thinner panel lining, while the other one is thicker and very black, but both the main thing trying to create is being clean.

What Zero1st said is like the ultimate truth in modelling, research (He he talk like real only, i myself darn lazy too )

What we do is like what we did when we were in school art class. basically we r using paint to recreate the image of certain thing. if u see a drop of blood, you can use paint to create something looks like a drop of blood on your model. try to draw or paint the image u want, with the help from reference. just be patient, slowly paint bit by bit.

u can use this as a guide line: I used to see a hongkong fren of mine, he's a pro modeller, he used 20 minutes, fully concerntreate, just to did some rust and oil stain on one GP03 knee cap. I saw him do it, just paint some color, wash, add somemore color, blend them.... exactly like what i did in water color class!