Whats Lying on your Workbench MK IV

[pengbuzz]

No, I'm done Thom. I don't even have the money for supplies let alone anything on ebay. Inflation's going to kill us.

 

*crawls back under rock with sore arms and hands*

[Urashiman]

2 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

No, I'm done Thom. I don't even have the money for supplies let alone anything on ebay. Inflation's going to kill us.

 

*crawls back under rock with sore arms and hands*

aww man ...

I remember back then, when I was super broke. I basically lived off of cheap ramen (that YumYum Shrimp stuff) for 3.5 years. I couldn't purchase anything else. I had squeezed every last cent out of a Euro, just to make it over the month. Having no money (or very little money) is like the inflation right now. You are struggling to make ends meet.

Best thing to do is to halt everything that isn't necessary, and work your way out of it. That is what I did in the end. I am not saying it is easy. It is really hard. I was doing 14 hour shifts a day, on a crappy paid job, and did every side gig I could just to have a plus at the end of the month on my bank account. The worst thing you can do, is to give up. Staying positive and motivated to do all that hard work is not easy as well, but there is no way around.

[Thom]

7 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

No, I'm done Thom. I don't even have the money for supplies let alone anything on ebay. Inflation's going to kill us.

 

*crawls back under rock with sore arms and hands*

Don't stay under the rock too long. Times are tough, but hopefully they will get better quick for you. Rest your limbs but keep the old mind active. And don't stay away, for we need our 'Peng of Wisdom!'

[pengbuzz]

1 hour ago, Thom said:

Don't stay under the rock too long. Times are tough, but hopefully they will get better quick for you. Rest your limbs but keep the old mind active. And don't stay away, for we need our 'Peng of Wisdom!'

Heh. If I'm so damned smart, why aren't I rich?

 

7 hours ago, Urashiman said:

aww man ...

I remember back then, when I was super broke. I basically lived off of cheap ramen (that YumYum Shrimp stuff) for 3.5 years. I couldn't purchase anything else. I had squeezed every last cent out of a Euro, just to make it over the month. Having no money (or very little money) is like the inflation right now. You are struggling to make ends meet.

Best thing to do is to halt everything that isn't necessary, and work your way out of it. That is what I did in the end. I am not saying it is easy. It is really hard. I was doing 14 hour shifts a day, on a crappy paid job, and did every side gig I could just to have a plus at the end of the month on my bank account. The worst thing you can do, is to give up. Staying positive and motivated to do all that hard work is not easy as well, but there is no way around.

We're already doing that (inflation put us right back on the edge we had escaped), and I'm disabled with no hope or ability to work (brain, spine and skeleto-muscular injuries guarantee that).

I appreciate your advice, but we're pretty much cut to the bone  as it stands. The next thing for us is cutting off our internet.

Anyways, please carry on folks. I've taken up enough time here; thanks for listening.

Edited September 6 by pengbuzz

[Urashiman]

3 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Heh. If I'm so damned smart, why aren't I rich?

 

We're already doing that (inflation put us right back on the edge we had escaped), and I'm disabled with no hope or ability to work (brain, spine and skeleto-muscular injuries guarantee that).

I appreciate your advice, but we're pretty much cut to the bone  as it stands. The next thing for us is cutting off our internet.

Anyways, please carry on folks. I've taken up enough time here; thanks for listening.

Argh… I wish you all the best then and hope you can make it.

may the odds be forever in your favour.

Edited September 6 by Urashiman

[Big s]

4 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Anyways, please carry on folks. I've taken up enough time here; thanks for listening.

I only check here because of time. You could never take too much of it, but if you ever did, I’d just skim to the good parts. Hope you get better and hope to see more from you. Things may turn up better than you expect one day soon when you least expect it

[Wewyllenium]

Working on Pin-Point-Barrier Punch Effect parts for 1/60 DX toys

[pengbuzz]

1 hour ago, Wewyllenium said:

Working on Pin-Point-Barrier Punch Effect parts for 1/60 DX toys

Nice job so far!

BTW: your keyboard looks just about as bad as mine!!

[F18LEGIOSS2]

Legioss gakken waterslide decals WIP Enjoy

 

[Thom]

@Wewyllenium Some nice paint effects on the Barrier parts.

@F18LEGIOSS2 Nice! Is this 1/72 or /48?

[Big s]

1 hour ago, F18LEGIOSS2 said:

Legioss gakken waterslide decals WIP Enjoy

 

Looks nice

[F18LEGIOSS2]

2 hours ago, Thom said:

@Wewyllenium Some nice paint effects on the Barrier parts.

@F18LEGIOSS2 Nice! Is this 1/72 or /48?

1/48 

[pengbuzz]

I has a sad now. my legioss still sits in pieces.

[Wewyllenium]

6 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Nice job so far!

BTW: your keyboard looks just about as bad as mine!!

Thanks. I paint in front of it. Wait till you see my monitor XD

[sketchley]

Mr Color Paint restoration project:

It looks like I've reached the stage where I don't need to add any more of the Replenishing Agent, need to dilute them with paint thinner, and will be able to start using the recovered paint.

It's taken this long mainly due to only adding a bit of Agent at a time.  The 1:1 ratio* is a bit of a challenge to achieve, as dried paint has significantly less volume than wet paint, and adding too much Agent will cause a whole slew of new problems.  Nevertheless, I've achieved my minimum goal of making the bottles easy to clean.  If I don't screw up now, I'll have successfully resuscitated the paint.

That said, the two colours I need to use first are both metallic—something that Mr. Color says the Replenishing Agent doesn't work with!  I suspect that their warning may be for spray painting, as it doesn't really make sense for brush painting, especially if it's right after mixing the paint.

 

Speaking of painting, the Regults need a surprising amount of minor colour swatches all over the place—such as silver behind the clear parts to get an additional light kick.

There is one part though on the Light Missile Pod that I've been hemming and hawing over the best way to approach.  It's the sensor eye between the two missile pods—the indented part with greebles that the light sabre is pointed at:

The instructions call for a black background, and silver surfaces.  The problem is: some of the surfaces are above the background, others are below.  (The green bits are raised, the red are lower, and the pink line is supposed to be black.)

I've been waffling over painting it black first, and dry brushing silver later, to painting it silver, and then putting a black watercolour wash over the top, and removing as much of that from the red indented parts as possible.

The complication is the size (I think I'd need to add paint using a needle to make the smaller red pits silver, nevermind a lack of fine brush control!)  On the other hand, as it will end up covered with a clear green part, and as most people tend to focus more on the red missiles when looking at it, I figure that whatever I end up doing, I won't have to be very precise.

What do you guys think?

 

* I'm aiming for something closer to 1 (70% agent, 30% thinner) : 1 (paint)

Edited September 8 by sketchley

[electric indigo]

43 minutes ago, sketchley said:

painting it silver, and then putting a black watercolour wash over the top, and removing as much of that from the red indented parts as possible

That would be my preferred approach; maybe even starting with silver or aluminium metal foil and using black acrylics.

[wm cheng]

More decals, I'd say about 40% were somewhat damaged in some way (due to age or reacted badly to MicroSOL by curling up), but I was able to re-piece together the broken bits on the model mostly, I think I only lost about 10-20% of the total amount of decals.  I supplemented with some other sci-fi decals where appropriate and I added the bottom thrusters in the forward fuselage by piecing together scraps of other decals (I was going to drill them out, but forgot and started painting, if the other decals weren't such a pain I probably would have, but now I just want to get the damn thing finished!).  Some of the decals required layering of the white underneath which ended up making a thick sandwich layers and I had to try to cut them around the panel lines so it looks painted on instead of lying over top.  The "607" had to have the white underside slightly offset like a shadow underneath the black numbers and really did a trick on my old tired eyes!  Hmm, I see Hasegawa went with 607 but I couldn't find any reference to that number in the anime, it was blank, and Bandai went with 102 (but isn't 102 the VF-1D at the beginning rescuing Minmay during the zero gravity which is a different Valkyrie 2 seater without stadium seating rear seats?)

Edited September 9 by wm cheng

[Chronocidal]

4 hours ago, wm cheng said:

The "607" had to have the white underside slightly offset like a shadow underneath the black numbers and really did a trick on my old tired eyes!  Hmm, I see Hasegawa went with 607 but I couldn't find any reference to that number in the anime, it was blank, and Bandai went with 102 (but isn't 102 the VF-1D at the beginning rescuing Minmay during the zero gravity which is a different Valkyrie 2 seater without stadium seating rear seats?)

There was a little discussion about this when Bandai's DX came out with the same 102 on it, rather than the 607.  I'm not sure where the 607 may have come from, maybe some obscure lineart?  Hasegawa may have made it up, and Yamato may have copied them.  It might be a Tenjin creation.

There aren't any numbers printed on the VT-1 in DYRL either, except for a single frame.  There's a close-up of some part of the valk in a flyby that gets zoomed in so close you can't even tell what part it's printed on, but there's a nice freeze-frame of a "102" text label in at least one frame.

Edit: Found the post here:

 

Edited September 9 by Chronocidal

[Thom]

Problems with decals or not, that is a gorgeous looking model! This is the one from DYRL, right, cause if I remember correctly, they didn't have the Ostrich in the original Macross series.

[electric indigo]

@wm cheng that's a nice & shiny Ostrich you got there!

I concluded the work on the IXTL, adding details to the armament.

Ready to secure the passage to Island 18.

[SteveTheFish]

Electric Indigo, is that from Ghost in the Shell or Patlabor? It looks familiar.

[Big s]

On 9/7/2024 at 11:01 PM, sketchley said:

Mr Color Paint restoration project:

It looks like I've reached the stage where I don't need to add any more of the Replenishing Agent, need to dilute them with paint thinner, and will be able to start using the recovered paint.

It's taken this long mainly due to only adding a bit of Agent at a time.  The 1:1 ratio* is a bit of a challenge to achieve, as dried paint has significantly less volume than wet paint, and adding too much Agent will cause a whole slew of new problems.  Nevertheless, I've achieved my minimum goal of making the bottles easy to clean.  If I don't screw up now, I'll have successfully resuscitated the paint.

That said, the two colours I need to use first are both metallic—something that Mr. Color says the Replenishing Agent doesn't work with!  I suspect that their warning may be for spray painting, as it doesn't really make sense for brush painting, especially if it's right after mixing the paint.

 

Speaking of painting, the Regults need a surprising amount of minor colour swatches all over the place—such as silver behind the clear parts to get an additional light kick.

There is one part though on the Light Missile Pod that I've been hemming and hawing over the best way to approach.  It's the sensor eye between the two missile pods—the indented part with greebles that the light sabre is pointed at:

The instructions call for a black background, and silver surfaces.  The problem is: some of the surfaces are above the background, others are below.  (The green bits are raised, the red are lower, and the pink line is supposed to be black.)

I've been waffling over painting it black first, and dry brushing silver later, to painting it silver, and then putting a black watercolour wash over the top, and removing as much of that from the red indented parts as possible.

The complication is the size (I think I'd need to add paint using a needle to make the smaller red pits silver, nevermind a lack of fine brush control!)  On the other hand, as it will end up covered with a clear green part, and as most people tend to focus more on the red missiles when looking at it, I figure that whatever I end up doing, I won't have to be very precise.

What do you guys think?

 

* I'm aiming for something closer to 1 (70% agent, 30% thinner) : 1 (paint)

I don’t have pictures of the part on the regult, but I chromed it using gloss black and Mr super metallic 2 silver. I think it was the silver, it was super thinned to a 5 to 1 ratio or more of thinner to paint. It comes out as a really durable chrome effect. Then I pushed some eraser putty into the sunken parts after making sure everything was cured for a few days. Then sprayed flat black enamel over the part. The used a light bit of zippo fluid and did a wipe over the raised parts. The pulled the putty out of the sunken areas.

Edited September 10 by Big s

[sketchley]

Mr Color Paint restoration project:

Considering that the paint was bone dry in the jars (the 'gun chrome' was particularly crusty!) a couple of weeks ago, AND I didn't melt any of the styrene that I painted it on, it looks I more or less pulled it off.  It wasn't quite 100%, but as the company warned that it won't work on metallics, that was kind of anticipated.

The two colours used:

The Mr Metallic Color GX Metal Black was the more successful of the two.  Initially I feared that I hadn't diluted it enough, and the paint was going on too thick.  However, aside from a few spots, it came out perfectly (in the sense of just like before it had dried out in the jar).

The Mr Color Gun Chrome was less successful.  It didn't go down smoothly, and I had to manipulate the paint after some of the liquid had vaporized.  The end result was basically matte when it should have been gloss.  Initially I thought it was because it was too diluted.  However, two days later when I looked inside the jar, it was settling out with a clearish/greyish liquid having formed on top and the metal flakes settling at the bottom.

The Mr Metallic Color was exactly the same two days later, so I'm presuming that the two types use different recipes that react differently to Replenishing Agent + Paint Thinner.

 

The results:

As most of these parts are hidden behind other parts (clear lenses, etc.) and are destined merely to reflect light, I'm satisfied with the result.

The only trouble spots I had with the Metal Black were the areas that (I think) I put it on too thinly.  That "reflection" in the nozzle on the upper right is not a reflection, but because it dried matte.

If memory serves (from 5 or more years ago! 😅), I think this occasionally happened before.  So, it's something to keep in mind when applying Mr Metallic Color GX (my 'story' is that Regults get banged up all the time, so of course they'll have scuff marks.)

They don't look half bad when assembled.  However, I'm getting strong urges to paint the gun barrels on the front the same colour to make it look more balanced!

I also slapped it onto the gun pod and engine thrusters of the VF-25→VF-24 conversion.

Was it worth the extra effort to add the Burnt Iron colour on the insides of the engines on the Regult (middle picture, above) and the Valkyrie?  Or is the colour difference too subtle?

 

On 9/8/2024 at 4:02 PM, electric indigo said:

That would be my preferred approach; maybe even starting with silver or aluminium metal foil and using black acrylics.

I tried this route.  Sadly, the paint (and my brushwork 😅) didn't come out as well as I would have liked...

 

On 9/10/2024 at 3:47 PM, Big s said:

I don’t have pictures of the part on the regult, but I chromed it using gloss black and Mr super metallic 2 silver. I think it was the silver, it was super thinned to a 5 to 1 ratio or more of thinner to paint. It comes out as a really durable chrome effect. Then I pushed some eraser putty into the sunken parts after making sure everything was cured for a few days. Then sprayed flat black enamel over the part. The used a light bit of zippo fluid and did a wipe over the raised parts. The pulled the putty out of the sunken areas.

That eraser putty is a good idea!  I have some blue tack lying around that should do that trick.

Edited September 11 by sketchley

[sketchley]

Hobby Color Paint Restoration - the water-based paints strike back

Next on the workbench are the water-based paints.  Not sure how old they are (getting on 15?  20 years?), but unlike the Mr Color paints, the ones I need are still liquid (highly viscous... ).

 

While diluting them with water is feasible, the information I've been able to find indicate that solvents (E.g. Aqueous Color Thinner, X-20A) are preferable to water.

Does anyone have any experience with mixing X-20A into Hobby Color?

 

 

One of the sites I looked at has this guide (double circles = excellent/very good, single circle = good/OK):

https://love-p.jp/mokei-color-solvent#i-7

That site indicates that own-brand solvents are best, but there are more or less no problems when used in different brand paint.  (it's well worth a look, as scrolling up there are a bunch of other similar diagrams for the other commonly available modelling paints and solvents in Japan).

 

Another site goes into detail about mixing Tamiya and Mr Hobby paints.  Long story short, it's basically OK, but some individual colours don't react well (clumping up, etc.):

https://peg4009.livedoor.blog/archives/9002979.html

 

This last one goes into a bit of detail about the differences between the old (circa 1996) and new Mr Hobby Aqueous paints.  In short, the big difference is the availability of solvents.

https://fudepla.com/tips/hobbycolor-mizuwari/

 

 

Edit:

Just so there's no confusion, the Hobby Color and Aqueous Hobby Color are one and the same, just a rebranding (old / new versions):

https://blog.goo.ne.jp/me262a/e/9f60b878c8d4ad2c2b93a394d20f7f82

Edited September 11 by sketchley

[electric indigo]

On 9/10/2024 at 5:40 AM, SteveTheFish said:

Electric Indigo, is that from Ghost in the Shell or Patlabor? It looks familiar.

Looks like you're due for a rewatch of Patlabor 2 – The Movie 😄

The great thing about the IXTL is that it's in scale with the ARTPLA Ingram.

[SteveTheFish]

Neat! I thought it looked familiar. I saw the Patlabor 2 movie fansubbed after it first came out, and it blew me away. It felt like a Tom Clancy movie.

So what is eraser putty, guys? That's something I've never heard of.

[Big s]

18 minutes ago, SteveTheFish said:

Neat! I thought it looked familiar. I saw the Patlabor 2 movie fansubbed after it first came out, and it blew me away. It felt like a Tom Clancy movie.

So what is eraser putty, guys? That's something I've never heard of.

I get it from art or hobby stores like Michael’s or hobby lobby. It’s rubbery and a little sticky. It’s used primarily for shaping and precise erasing or sketch art, but found out the stuff is great for masking for models. It sticks a little and can be shaped for tight spaces or ripped apart for smaller pieces or tiny areas. It can totally be reused project after project and somehow stays sticky by rolling it back up. I’ve got the same reused clump for over a decade and recently bought some more to use in a larger project.this is the particular brand that I buy, it’s a little square for just over a dollar. It’s great stuff and well worth a purchase 

[SteveTheFish]

4 hours ago, Big s said:

I get it from art or hobby stores like Michael’s or hobby lobby. It’s rubbery and a little sticky. It’s used primarily for shaping and precise erasing or sketch art, but found out the stuff is great for masking for models. It sticks a little and can be shaped for tight spaces or ripped apart for smaller pieces or tiny areas. It can totally be reused project after project and somehow stays sticky by rolling it back up. I’ve got the same reused clump for over a decade and recently bought some more to use in a larger project.

Ah, OK. So it's like blue tack in how you can use it for masking and such. Thanks. I use blue tack to do camo patterns and such.

[Big s]

53 minutes ago, SteveTheFish said:

Ah, OK. So it's like blue tack in how you can use it for masking and such. Thanks. I use blue tack to do camo patterns and such.

It’s a similar use, but I feel like the eraser putty is a little easier to shape for tough spots

[sketchley]

Tried the Blue Tack/Eraser Putty trick.

The plan was to use the wash (black watercolour paint + water + a bit of X-20A to give it a bit of bite) over the painted parts.  Due to things like the Gun Chrome Paint I used not being able to be fully restored to factory fresh, things didn't go to plan...

 

Upper picture: Blue Tack in situ.  The wash didn't pool as much as I would have liked in between the raised bits.  Nevertheless, the tack did it's job.

Lower picture: Blue Tack didn't come off all in one go.  Generally massaging excess Blue Tack into the stubborn bits removes it all.  Which back fired, as the Blue Tack immediately picked up the excess wash on the raised bits, and started smudging it into the places that I didn't want it!!!  I stopped as soon as I noticed what was going on...

 

 

After using moistened Q-tips to remove the excess wash from the raised bits.  While the part now has a nice and grimy 'well-used' look, it's not exactly what I was aiming for, and looks more like a flashlight reflector and less like a collection of sensors...

 

So, I have 3 options:

1. wash off the wash, and try again (most likely getting similar results)

2. leave it as is

3. dust off my oil based manga ink, and draw in the lines.  I've done it before and it's painstaking and slow.  As the ink is next to impossible to get off, it means even more caution and care...

 

[pengbuzz]

2 hours ago, sketchley said:

Tried the Blue Tack/Eraser Putty trick.

The plan was to use the wash (black watercolour paint + water + a bit of X-20A to give it a bit of bite) over the painted parts.  Due to things like the Gun Chrome Paint I used not being able to be fully restored to factory fresh, things didn't go to plan...

 

Upper picture: Blue Tack in situ.  The wash didn't pool as much as I would have liked in between the raised bits.  Nevertheless, the tack did it's job.

Lower picture: Blue Tack didn't come off all in one go.  Generally massaging excess Blue Tack into the stubborn bits removes it all.  Which back fired, as the Blue Tack immediately picked up the excess wash on the raised bits, and started smudging it into the places that I didn't want it!!!  I stopped as soon as I noticed what was going on...

 

 

After using moistened Q-tips to remove the excess wash from the raised bits.  While the part now has a nice and grimy 'well-used' look, it's not exactly what I was aiming for, and looks more like a flashlight reflector and less like a collection of sensors...

 

So, I have 3 options:

1. wash off the wash, and try again (most likely getting similar results)

2. leave it as is

3. dust off my oil based manga ink, and draw in the lines.  I've done it before and it's painstaking and slow.  As the ink is next to impossible to get off, it means even more caution and care...

 

I would say: paint the entire circle black, then use a cotton swab to remove it from the raised areas once it's dry.

[Spacecore]

Well, I suppose these go here.

Last few months, got really into Macross. This seems to happen every summer, I dedicate myself to a new older sci-fi anime franchise (last year was Legend of the Galactic Heroes, year before was Space Battleship Yamato, both resulted in a lot of spaceships being built). But, I ended up with a 1/4000 Hasegawa SDF-1, DYRL version. That opening shot of it emerging from the shadow of Jupiter, with all the blinking lights, was just so iconic, that I've spent the last few weeks painstakingly drilling hundreds of tiny holes and feeding .25mm fiberoptics through them. It's been an interesting project so far, still not even sure how it'll come together, but the pieces I have right now are pretty good looking at least.

I've lost count of how many I've installed already, but I'm breaking them up into 3 groups, so I can later install LEDs that blink in sequence, with the help of a pi nano. The general idea is for 2/3 to be on at all times, so the sequence goes 1/2 on, 2/3 on, then 3/1 on. This way, some will always be lit, and it looks more active than not. The engines are going to be on a separate circuit, running into 12 LEDs that all flicker slightly, so the engines look active and humming. 

Honestly, the biggest roadblocks I've encountered are what steps to do in what order, and lack of space in the ship/stand for wiring and batteries. The latter can be easily fixed with a 3d printed addition to the stand, but the former is more of an issue. Because of how I plan to install the LEDs and fiberoptics, combined with how the legs are built, there's not a lot of room to work with, meaning I'll need to paint stuff in sub-assemblies before finishing the wiring and assembling, before finishing the painting. It's a more complex assembly process than any of my builds in the past, so I've just been struggling to wrap my head around it, hahaha.

Hope I didn't screw up the formatting, I'm not really used to forums.

[Thom]

@Spacecore That lighting looks great! Love the blinkies and can already imagine it recreating that scene!

[Spacecore]

1 minute ago, Thom said:

@Spacecore That lighting looks great! Love the blinkies and can already imagine it recreating that scene!

Thank you! Now hopefully I can finish it within a reasonable amount of time, and not let it fall into my pile of WIPs stuck in limbo...

[Thom]

11 minutes ago, Spacecore said:

Thank you! Now hopefully I can finish it within a reasonable amount of time, and not let it fall into my pile of WIPs stuck in limbo...

I have that pile too! Someday I'll have to start hitting the back-log.