Jakko's TC’s Hughes 500 from Magnum, P.I. Italeri 1/72

[Jim R]

That is very small Jakko. Looks fine in the photo. The window masking looks time consuming.

[Guest]

It was, especially the top of the windscreen. The side windows were easy: stick the part to the tape, burnish it down a bit and cut around it with a sharp knife. The main problem with the windscreen was cutting out the frame, which was almost impossible to see through the tape. Attempt numbers 2 and 3 were to put two pieces of tape along the transverse bit of frame instead, leaving it free rather than having to cut it out, but on attempt 2 I put them at a slight angle that wasn’t really noticeable off the helicopter but very apparent once the glazing was held up to the fuselage …

[Guest]

Primed white:

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And when I was doing that, I realised that I had forgotten to cut the front frame out of the masking tape :rolling: Well, that will have to be hand-painted then.

[Guest]

Bright yellow now!

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This is just from an aerosol can of RAL Traffic Yellow, largely because I had one available and I didn’t want to be thinning very small amounts of paint if I could avoid it Once it’s dry I’ll mask the stripes and paint the orange.

[Mini Me]

Cool!

[Guest]

I finally got myself to do the chore of masking the yellow stripes:

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And then I had a stroke of bad luck. I pulled open the paint drawer where I had put the orange paint I bought specifically for this model, and discovered that it wasn’t Mr. Aqueous Hobby Color as I thought, but Mr. Hobby Color — the lacquer paint that I can’t get along with Not sure who made this mistake, though. I’m certain I wouldn’t have clicked on the paint if I noticed it was lacquer, but the order confirmation from the web store where I bought it, only says “orange paint (10 ml)” so it’s also possible they confused the two. In any case, I couldn’t do what I had wanted to: paint the model orange.

After checking if there happened to be an orange aerosol in the house and finding no, there wasn’t, I went to a paint store in the next village. That turned out to have yellow and red aerosols, but not orange. Sigh … Back home, then, wondering what else I could try,

This evening, I went through all of my acrylic paints and only found oranges that had dried out, as I expected — else I wouldn’t have ordered the paint some months ago. Then I remembered that last year, I had been given some Badger airbrush acrylics, when my mother’s junk shop had gotten in a Badger 150 with paints, cleaner and some beginner’s instruction books from the 90s. Lo and behold, there was a half-empty bottle of orange among them! I was in business!

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This Badger paint doesn’t seem to like going over the generic glossy aerosol paint, though. I had to mist it on to prevent it beading up, but I eventually got a coat that covers on the model.

After that there was one more lesson: these paints know which brand of airbrush they’re in! It was fairly hard to clean it out of my airbrush even with Badger airbrush cleaner, because clearly, Badger paints don’t really want to work in an Iwata …

[Jim R]

Well the orange is on the little 'copter. Spent far more time finding the paint and cleaning the airbrush but the only cost was time :smiling:

[adt70hk]

Looking very good Jakko!

[Guest]

Now I just need to mask the orange as well and spray the brown. Luckily I bought a bottle Tamiya acrylic for that

[Guest]

Dammit!

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That bloody Badger paint that doesn’t want to get out of an airbrush cup, does want to come off a model I just put on a strip of masking tape, but had to pull it off to reposition it slightly, and orange paint came off with it … the second bit, further ti the right, is where I tested it to see if the paint elsewhere sticks poorly too.

I think I may have to clean all the paint off and try again with some other orange. That I will need to find somewhere first … Maybe hand-paint it with a 35-year-old tin of Humbrol or something.

[yak face]

Ouch , shame about the paint lifting jakko , its looking brilliant though , hopefully another coat of orange will sort it , tiny thing isnt it !

[Guest]

It is tiny, that white masking tape is 3 mm wide. But I need to find first some way to remove the existing orange (preferably without lifting the tape), and then an orange paint that will actually stick to the model …

[stillp]

DON'T use Spraycraft airbrush cleaner! Try methylated spirit.
Pete

[Guest]

Good, as I don’t have any Spraycraft airbrush cleaner Methylated spirits was indeed what I had in mind to try first.

[Guest]

There seems to be some light on the horizon: though I still haven’t done anything more on the model, I yesterday decided to see if the paint just needed more drying time. A piece of masking tape stuck to the orange didn’t lift it off, so I guess waiting a day was too short. All I did then was to brush-paint some of the Badger orange over the lifted spots, and I’ll wait a few more days before doing another test to see if it will lift off then. If not, I can mask and spray the rest of the model …