Interior of the Nissan Skyline

 I have been working hard on the interior for my Nissan Skyline. I primed the parts and started painting them. Everything ticked along as normal and I was impressed with the colour, German Grey for the dashboard and other plastics. I will need to get my hands on some proper thinners for my finishing coats. I had to paint on the satin coat for the plastic parts by hand. I was concerned about brush strokes and uneven coating but the satin coat turned out pretty well.

I then moved onto the seats and here I was using the texture paints, charcoal and blue. The charcoal went down well, thin coats applied a number of times gave a good finish. However, when it came to do the blue coats, I applied them a little too thick and, when drying, the paint started to crack. Once dry I had to re-prime the blue areas and apply thinner coats of blue. I was worried that the paint would end up being too thick but once I removed the mask, it turned out fine. I had to touch up a couple of edges but overall I am happy with the result. Also, lesson learned. 

Once I had flocked the carpet, it was time to put it all together. Here are some pics of the pieces before construction.

The pieces when together pretty well... 

I am very pleased with how this went together but I do have to wait to put the seat belts in. I have the material for the belts but the fastenings are still out of stock. Looks like the interior will have to be completed another time but so far so good. I am leaning towards using the blue seatbelts but a final decision will be made once I receive the fastenings. 

That's it for the latest update to my Skyline. Next up, the chassis and the body work. I am looking forward to using that midnight purple. 

Deliveries for my next project and Spray Booth

 For some time now, I have been using an old Computer monitor delivery box for my spray booth. It was light and could be easily folded away. However it got rather grubby and started to fall apart. I needed something a little more robust but still compact. This is where my Dad stepped up. I have many tools for model making but very few for woodworking, however my Dad has plenty. Handy that. He asked what I needed so I described that it had to be able to be packed away and light enough to move around. I will use it in my model room for general painting but will need to move it into my kitchen where there is more air flow when using Lacquer paints. Unfortunately, I never gave my Dad an accurate height, I just described something the size of a dart board cover. 

A few weeks later, he had produced a brilliant booth for me. He had finished it earlier but with Covid restricts, couldn't get it to me. It was perfect, Just a little too tall. I needed it to fit under my shelves on my model bench and under my kitchen cabinets in the kitchen, so I had to make a few modifications myself. I then tapped white paper on the inside to cover the gaps where the booth folds up and to reflect as much light back onto the model as possible. It looks great!

 Sure it looks rough and ready but it will do the job perfectly and much better than some old grotty cardboard box. With just a few hinges and some bits of wood, I have a new, amazing spray booth. Things don't have to be expensive to do the job amazingly well. Thank you Dad for an amazing job, I can't wait to put it to good use. 

My next project is a midnight purple Nissan Skyline GTR R34 and for this I needed some extra parts and materials. After a few deliveries, most of my parts and materials have arrived. Lets take a look at what we have. 

First of all, lets look at the boxes at the back. The model comes with standard wheels but I wanted something a little more.. GTR. Luckily Heroboy is there for me for many after market mods and I bought a set of 18" Rays along with Toyo tyres to match. To the right of these boxes I have perfectly colour matched Lacquer paint in Rays copper to match the real life wheels. 

I also purchased some realistic chrome paint as I wasn't happy with the other chrome I purchased before and really wanted to give this paint a try. 

I have two cans of Tamyia Grey primer along with a couple of small pots of acrylic paint, German grey and aluminium. Pretty basic paints but needed as part of this model. Behind the small pots I have Zeropaints Gloss Black. This will act as a base coat (after the primer) for the wheels and Chrome as to produce a good metallic finish a good gloss black undercoat is needed. 

Next to the gloss black I have two pots of textured paints, Charcoal and Blue. I will use these for the car's seats and internal door panels. Textured paint gives a material type texture and I am really looking forward to seeing the results of using these. Just a little added detail. 

Expo superglue for gluing parts that need much more stability. In front of the wheel boxes I have clear fix glue. This is used on transparent plastic parts like lights and windows, rather than normal glue which sometimes causes the plastic to fog, something I do not need to happen. 

The small clear plastic packet on the right is an aftermarket exhaust tip and muffler. I opted for something a little larger than the standard one that comes with the kit. The packet to the left has metal GTR decals. On the real car the body badges are metal and slightly raised. These decals will hopefully replicate that detailed look. 

The two packets of what look like ribbons are, in fact, seatbelt material. They even have stitches along the full length, very highly detailed. I purchased both blue and black as I am undecided which one to use. Either way, they will be handy for other models. 

The packet on the right, with black, orange and yellow sponges are polishing sponges. I wasn't quite happy with the final finish of the Ferrari F40. I was sure I could of gotten a higher shine. After watching a few youtube videos I found out I could use these sponges (that have differing grades of polish) along with polishing compound (which I already have) with my Dremall Tool to, hopefully, produce a very high quality 'machine' polish. 

To seal and give the bodywork that little extra, I purchased some spray on sealing wax (the spray bottle in the centre) from splash. This is like the wax you use on your real life car and can really finish off a good machine polish. 

Then, at the bottom, I purchased some new fine detail brushes. I always like to buy new fine detail brushes from time to time, as the older ones get ragged no matter how much you clean them. The pack also came with very fine detailed 'sponge' brushes. These are used to dab paint onto very fine detailed areas. 

Those are my recent purchases. I still have a few things to come but currently they are out of stock. These include decals for my new wheels and for brake callipers. I also need metal etched seatbelt fixings but I can still work on the model without those for now.

I am looking forward to getting started, using my new spray booth and seeing if I can better my last model. I hope this little insight is enjoyable as it gives more of an inside look as to what it entails to produce awesome looking models. Until next time :)

This is what happens when you are a model maker

 The other night, I was enjoying a few drinks online with friends and I was browsing the model sites. The night wore on until, eventually it was time for bed. 

The next morning I awoke and turned on my computer, I was greeted by a message saying my Amazon order would arriving this afternoon. Amazon order? What did I order? 

Well it turns out, that if you are a model maker, even though you have plenty of other models to be getting on with, when you see that model you really like, you just have to buy it and add it to the list of models to make. 

Turns out that is exactly what happened, only compounded by the wine. So what was it I purchased? A muscle car! A type of car that I have yet to add to my collection and it happens to be one of my favourite classic muscle cars, the Shelby Mustang GT 350 H. 

I am looking forward to building this one... eventually. 

F40 Complete!

 After some tricky situations marring the chassis to the bodywork, I managed to get it to fit perfectly. I had to then apply the decals to the bodywork, something I really should of done weeks ago before applying the Diamond Gloss coat, oh well, next time. With some touch ups and trying to remove some of the superglue I accidently got onto the paintwork while fixing the body to the chassis. I had it complete! Sure there are parts I could of done better and there have been lessons learnt but I am ultimately very pleased with the result. 

I just wish the pictures done it justice. 

 

I tried some pics with and without flash to try to show it off as best I could. Finally I took some pictures on my cutting mat to show it's actual size. The numbers are in Centimetres while inches are below. 

 I have a display case on order that I will mount it in so it doesn't get dusty but for now, it's complete and I hope you enjoyed seeing it's progress almost as much as I did building it. 

Update For my Model Ferrari F40

 It's been a while since I last updated my Blog here but that doesn't mean there hasn't been any progress. In fact, there has been quite a bit of progress. Not as much as I had hoped by now but this year has been kind of difficult. 

Anyway, here's what's been happening. Last Update I showed the body work sprayed in the base colour red. Here it is once I had applied the gloss coat. The gloss coat is a lacquer 2K Dimond coat. It looks pretty darn good although I wish the camera picked up the proper red colour and not make it look pink.  

The rest of the parts had to be pieced out, cleaned and base coated. The model has 70 pieces so I couldn't spray them all at once but here are the majority of the parts all pieced off the sprew, cleaned and base coated.

I realy enjoy using the airbrush. Now I have learnt how to use and clean it properly with thicker paints. Once the pieces were base coated, they had to be sprayed up in the relevant colours. The first major part of the model I will be putting together is the chassis and engine. Putting the wheels on was the tricky part. When I used to make model cars when I was young, impatient and with wobbly fingers, I could never get the wheels to turn, let alone steer properly. However, with patience and a LOT less glue than I used to use, I managed it and I was very pleased. So once the pieces were sprayed I put the chassis together. 

This was tricky but nothing I wasn't used to. The painted engine blocks, didnt quite work out as well as I had hoped but all they needed was an extra smidge of gloss coat. The tricky part was yet to come. 

Now for the interior. This had to be perfect, considering it was highly detailed and would be on show as one of the major parts of the car, so I wanted it to look spot on. 

First issue was the floor pan. In the actual car, it is constructed from Carbon Fibre. However, you can't 'paint' carbon fibre and I really wanted it to be accurate. So I purchased a scaled Carbon Fibre decal sheet. However, it just comes in a single complete sheet and the model does not come with any templates for the floor pan so I had to make my own. I used masking tape and masked up all the areas and carefully cut the mask accurately for each and every surface that need the decals. I then removed, carefully the mask, stuck it to the decal sheet and cut the decal by hand before applying to the surface using decal fix and decal softener to get the perfect fit. It took hours to fully Carbonise each and every surface of the floor pan, including the wheel wells and once I had gloss coated the decals and touched up the edges, it was worth it. It looked amazing. 

In the real car, the centre console and the dash board are carpeted, again, something that doesn't come out with paint alone. Therefore, I had to purchase some fine carpet black flock. I coated the surfaces with gloss coat and sprinkled on the flock to give the surfaces that carpet effect. It was fairly easy to do but the flock is so fine it just gets everywhere and seems to stick to everything with static, so pretty tough to clean off the excess. 

I had a small issue with the gear shift. I had painted it and when i came to put it into the model, it sprung from the clip and vanished into thin air. Dang it! I was never going to find something that small ever again. So instead, I took a wooden toothpick and, using my Dremal, carved out a new gear stick. Phew!

The seats were next. Prior to painting them, I had to grind off the moulded seat belts. They looked terrible and I had purchased some etched metal ones, that look much better and are far more detailed, so I really wanted to use those. I painted the whole seats red and then had to apply more carbon fibre decals to the backs of them, as the real seats are made from Carbon fibre. I was concerned the decals wouldn't mould around the shape of the seats but the decal softener worked wonders here. 

The seat belts were incredibly fiddly and small. The belt connectors were tiny and I was so afraid that one or more would just spring off into the void. Making the belts took so much concentration and patience and eventually I had them compete. Now to put it all together for a complete interior but not before I add the door 'handles'. Well I say handles.... In the real car they are nothing more than a pull cord. Well it is a sports car. I achieved this easily but using some flower arranging wire. 

Well that's the cockpit. Now to fix it to the chassis. Got to do this right or the bodywork will not sit properly, so here we go...!

Here we are. Chassis and interior all fixed together. I am very pleased with the result so far. It looks pretty cool and very detailed, although somewhat like a go cart. So next up, the bodywork needs to be married to the chassis. I just love the carbon fibre effect, I was worried it wouldn't really show but its does, albeit subtle. 

Next time, I will be adding the bodywork. 

Painting the bodywork of my Ferrari F40

The Ferrari F40 has always been one of my favourite Super cars and I was so pleased at the prospect of making it myself and adding it to my 'garage'. I wanted to create a realistic version with some amazing body painting. So I have been watching a number of YouTube videos and bought some premium paints from Splash and Zero Paints, from sites such as Premium Hobbies and Hiroboy. 

I also bought a brand new airbrush and compressor. So all in all, I invested a lot into getting an amazing finish to the body work. I learnt a lot when painting; The primer was tricky, it is a thick product and requires a hardener to be mixed in and I accidentally poured back into the primer jar some already mixed primer and it made it go all gloopy and I had to filter out the lumps. So That lesson is learnt never pour back in mixed primer. Needless to say, the primer coat didn't go down as good as I had hoped.

I then didn't clean out the airbrush as well as I had thought I had, so the primer hardened up inside the delicate airbrush and gummed it all up, so when I came to paint the colour coat, that didn't go down as well neither.  I realised it was all down to the cleaning, so some more purchases of proper cleaning fluid and cleaning equipment and a jolly good soaking and cleaning of the air brush, the red paint went down rather well. 

The finish isn't as good as I had hoped but I have learnt a lot, when it comes to using these new paints and primers that my next project will hopefully be better. That being said. I am still rather pleased with the result for my first attempt. 

Here are some pictures of the colour coat done. 

It looks quite matt for now as the gloss coat is to come. The paint colour I used was Rosso Corsa from Splash Paints. 

I have finished the clear, gloss coat today and pictures will come next time, once it is dry and polished. Fingers crossed it comes out well.