Getting scale windshields in without them looking terrible (glue smears, finger smears, poor fit) is always tough for me. The glass that came with the kit (AMT/Ertl #6268) didn't fit, and it looked too thick. So I put some styrene rod into the inside of the roof....
And cut a playing card up to size out how big the "glass" (to be cut out of clear tyvek) will be. Should be pretty straightforward, but we'll see how it works when final assembly day comes.
Dashboards are tricky for me too. They never seem to fit right. The kit has me suspend the dash between the two interior side panels, but on other builds that's never worked for me. Instead I've glued a strip of styrene to the back of the dashboard, which I'll affix to the body, beneath the windshield.
I didn't much like the custom wheels that came with the Ertl kit; instead I found 2 wheels in the parts box that looks like something that might have been dreamed up by Centerline in the 1:1 world. But I only had 2 wheels, and needed 4...which means....time to cast.
I used 1:1 RTV mold maker this time, having run out of the first batch of 1:10. I like the 1:1 a lot better--much easier to prepare and mix.
Trying to learn from previous mistakes, I put polymer clay around the entire mold as a barrier; I learned my lesson a few months ago when RTV mold goo leaked all over the place before it had time to set. It made a heck of a mess!
So here's what I used this time around. I found that tiny bubbles (real ones, not the ones in the song) were getting into tight places in the wheel mold and was making small details, like the scale "bolts" on each wheel look, well, terrible. To fix this I use a toothpick right after the resin pour and actively chase the bubbles out. Now the scale bolts look spot-on.
BTW latex gloves are a big time saver, keeps RTV and resin crud off my hands, and I am not going to do a lot more casting without wearing them.
So here are the Centerlines I ended up with. There were a few issues with the very outer rims having tiny holes in them, but I figure these can be fixed with gap-filling CA glue.
I also found at the bottom of my parts box a crazy, retro looking Mag wheel, perhaps off an old Monogram drag kit. I figured I might as well make some copies of that too, and I did. No idea what I'll end up using them for.
1 comment:
Charlie:
The tiny bubbles (again not of the song) pop up in real castings, too. They're called "voids," and they're especially prevalent in cast aluminum, like engine blocks. Good engineering helps eliminate voids, but not always, and there are a lot of cast 1:1 pieces that go back into the furnace.
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