April 2011 Ping

[Oceaneer99]

April 2011 Ping:

This month, I'm helping my three children with their pinewood derby cars:

7-year old's car is complete (his race was a few weeks ago)
9-year old daughter, and 11-year old son's cars have their first coat of paint. The race is only six days away.

My daughter (she's not in Boy Scouts, but attends every meeting and wanted to build a car) is working on a scale model Smart Car.  I did the initial shaping, but she did all of the final shaping and sanding.  We used an airbrush to put her custom blue paint on last night.  We used Delta Ceramcoat craft paint thinned with Wagner Paint Easy -- this worked really well.  That was the first time I've airbrushed a model with craft paint.

My son's car is painted with Krylon gloss white.  He plans on a gold-colored canopy (he liked the look of my VKA-23 spaceplane).

I've been cleaning out old jars of hardened Future, paint, etc.  The small plastic jars I use seem to be fine for acrylics, but lacquers dry out after a few years. I used lacquer thinner to bring those back to life, though.  I also transferred my automotive spot compound (nitrocellulose putty) to several jars -- the tube developed a crack and the putty was starting to harden.  I found lacquer thinner can be used to thin the putty.

I also prepared several flip-top dropper bottles of helpful liquids:

honing oil
alcohol
water
acetone
lacquer thinner

I need to make another containing the Paint Easy paint additive.  The Model Master thinner is already in a large dropper bottle.

I need to make a holder for my airbrush to use when I need to put down the airbrush.  I use a paint cup rather than a bottle, so it doesn't stand up on its own.

Garet

[lastvautour]

Let's have some pictures of the Derby cars.

Lou

[Balsabasher]

They sound like real fun,bring them on Garet.
Barry.

[Oceaneer99]

I've taken a few photos of the cars under construction and will upload them this week.  And, hopefully, I can post photos of the finished cars sometime after that 

Garet

[lastvautour]

Barry, I have seen those commercial here also. To the first to try the frog tape, please let everyone know if it works as advertised.

Lou

[lastvautour]

You have to check this guy out. A Michaelangelo is an understatement.

Lou

[lastvautour]

Frog tape work well however pending more experimentation. I am cautiously optimistic.

Not having anywhere else to put this, I played around with a paper hangar found on line. There are others and this one is intended for 1/144 scale, however due to my lack of heavy bond paper it was done at about 1/300 scale. I posed it with my 1/144 Kittyhawk. I await the purchase of heavier paper.

Lou

[Balsabasher]

That is a neat little hangar Lou,can you please give us the link to download the patterns ? thank you.
Barry

[lastvautour]

Barry, this is one site.
http://www.tomtom-net.de/resources/cardmodel/hangar/hangar_f.htm
Lou

[dave_t]

I think this is the hangar, along with a control tower and other buildings- http://kampfgruppe144.com/downloads_All_00.htm

[lastvautour]

Thank you Dave. I had lost that link. I will place it in the link post.

Lou

[Peter]

I posted a link a while back for model builder software. It's a really easy to use program for designing card model buildings. You can choose any scale you want even custom scales. I believe the link is in the pilots lounge. It could easily be used for sesigning entire airports.

Lou, I haven't finished the P-40 yet. I have fallen into the age old modelers curse of working on multible projects at the same time. The P-40, a basswood towboat kit, Klings racer from the plan on this site. I've also purchased basswood egg from Michaels Craft store I'm thinking of using as a starting point for the Space Ranger plan in the file section.

Peter 

[lastvautour]

Peter, as long as it makes you happy, do it. We await your results.

Lou