Saturday, December 14, 2013

Audi R8--Now for Something a Tiny Bit Different

My 11-year old nephew and I were supposed to build this Audi A8 kit but he didn't seem particularly interested.  Compared to video games, let's face it--model making is pretty dull if you're a kid!
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So I figured I might as well take a crack at building it; what the heck, it's not the kind of kit I usually build.  


After having built kits now for a few years I am getting into a routine--first thing is to prepare the parts for paint--clean them up, get rid of flash and mold lines, and put them onto bamboo sticks with alligator clips on the end, ready for paint.


I am renting a new place and thus dedicated a corner of the dark-n-stinky garage to be my pseudo paint booth--we are ready to go…..


And presto, we are back, with most of the parts primed up and ready for color coat.  About two-thirds of the build will be painted semi gloss black, following the color call outs in the instructions.  I am not sure if those call outs match the real world--it seems like an awful lot of semi gloss back--but I don't really care, it's just a stupid model kit!  The other third of the parts will be finished with lacquer metalizers. Always fun!


Speaking of always fun, the body has some pretty big sink marks right in front facia that are very easy to see.  These puppies have to be filled in.  And of course (!) the gnarliest sink mark of them all is right  underneath the Audi Logo.  Getting that cleaned up as is would be almost impossible, so I will get a photo etched logo so I can just sand the whole thing out!


More sink marks by the headlights--wow, that's ugly!  This kit might have modern tooling but some of the casting the work feels a bit like ancient AMT to me!  Forget modern tooling!  Bring back the 68 Toronado!



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