Category: Acrylic
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The Wrong Shade Of Black

Resign yourself – you may have made a fabulous model of a P-61 or a Lancaster or a Mosquito and a great deal – or all – of the thing will be a very definite black colour. But as soon as you show it at any exhibition, someone will tell you you’ve used the wrong…
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Peas And Carrots – Part Five – Cleaning Your Plate

Well, after all the paint mule spraying, I took a second bite at the vegetables next day and discovered that the taste was not as bad as first feared: a. Mr. Hobby matte acrylic paint can be sprayed with the Supercheap Auto clear car acrylic if you cut it with Mr. Hobby Levelling Thinner 400…
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Peas And Carrots – Part Four – The Top Coat
The top coat on a model is intended to seal the decals in place and give the surface whatever sort of reflectivity you feel is appropriate. Night bombers might have a matt or semi-matt surface while civilian planes get a satin or gloss finish. I am partial to the latter myself for some of the…
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Peas And Carrots – Part Three – The First Sealer

The first clear coat on the paint mule chips was meant to duplicate the sealer that one puts on after the paint job is completed to allow decals to be applied without silvering. The US and UK modellers speak of using Future or Kleer acrylic floor polish for this. I tried three of the new…
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Peas And Carrots – Part Two – The Colour Coats

Why peas and carrots? Because they are vegetables that always look better in the images on the cans than they do on your plate – and they are always greener or more orange in someone else’s dinner. My experiments are designed to improve their colour and flavour on mine. The colour paint coats that went…
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Peas And Carrots – Part One – Haunting the Shops

And paint mules. A fine dinner combination, but you have to be trained up to the taste. Today has been another day spent in the Lawrence Liverwurst labs, experimenting with finishing materials. I have seen intriguing advertisements for different clear coats and decided to see if they were indeed the El Dorado of painting. I…
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The New Airbrush Debuts

The new Mr. Hobby Procom WA airbrush has been on the hose for over a week now and a variety of material has flowed through the nozzle – time for first impressions report. The facility of dialing the air pressure up or down through the gun with a small knob under the colour cup is…
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1931 Ford Model A – Part Six – The Ick Begins

I wish I had a vial of dirt from every continent. Then I could mix up weathering paint colours accurately. As it is, I use red paints for Australia and neutral browns for Europe. Not sure what Montana looks like under the grass. But nothing daunted, I decided to get the Ford dirty. An acrylic…
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1931 Ford Model A – Part Four – Occam’s Airbrush

To get you up to speed – Google Occam’s Razor. It’s a fascinating read – but cut to the bone, it is the business of deliberate seeking the simplest explanation for something. In my case it was the business of making rust. Not real rust, you understand – that is a matter of iron, water,…
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” There Should Be An Enormous Kerboom…”

As Marvin the Martian was wont to say…and if my mazel runs to form this year that is exactly what I might produce in my Little Workshop. You see I have taken to collecting solvents and thinners. It started with a simple bottle of Tamiya X-20A and seems to have burgeoned. The advent of lacquer…
