My 1st Kit since returning to the hobby (Tamiya Jeep 1/35)

[scottie3158]

Steve, Welcome to the mad house.

[Guest]

That’s a pretty good effort, even without considering it’s your first in a long time.

One tip I have for future models is not to paint rubber parts black, but use a very dark grey instead. Real rubber tyres are rarely actually black, unless they’re brand-new or wet — look at cars, for example. Many manufacturers sell a very dark grey specifically as a “rubber” or “tyre” colour, which are good to use for them instead. I like to apply a coat of black Indian ink (the kind sold in art stores, for drawing) thinned about 1:1 or 1:2 with water over the grey to enhance the rubber look, but just the grey will look better than pure black already.

Oh! That is a very good tip! Thank you so much. Unfortunately it's really too late to repaint them now as they're glued on but I will certainly bear this in mind for all my future builds!

in fact I've just ordered some. Thanks for that!

[Guest]

You’ll learn something new with every model anyway

[yak face]

Nice work steve , looks great . Cheers tony

[Gern]

Good stuff! Looking forward to seeing more.

[Guest]

I need help regarding decals! I've placed most of them okay, but I am having a huge issue with the very tiny ones that go on the front mudguards.

The decals are not bending around the plastic, just sticking up. I added these about 7 hours ago and added some humbrol decal fix in the hope they would bend around the surface but they aren't. I enclose an image.

is there a way I can fix this?

[Mark1]

I would let them dry and just trim off the excess with a sharp blade, its only the carrier film.

[Guest]

I would let them dry and just trim off the excess with a sharp blade, its only the carrier film.

Thank you, I'll do that.

[Guest]

Tamiya decals are notorious for having very thick carrier film. This is not necessarily a problem when applying them to a flat surface larger than the decal, but it can be very much an issue with decals like you have here.

If Humbrol decal solution is still the same as it was thirty years ago, then it won’t do much to help the decal conform to the surface, I’m afraid. Micro Set and Sol are still the standard, really, and work quite well on all decals I’ve ever tried them on.

[Waspie]

Just caught up with this one Steve. Nice work.

[Guest]

Leaving the decals to dry and then cutting them seemed to work fine so thanks for that.
Today I woke up looking forward to working on this more as I'm near the end, all was fine until I picked it up for a close inspection.

..oh no!!

I've only gone and snapped off the mirror and I don't know when. Noooooo!
I spent almost an hour looking for the part, with a torch, then on my hands and knees but alas I cannot find it. I'm guessing when I was doing the decals I must have caught the mirror on my clothes and snapped it.

So so very angry with myself right now. I guess it's another mistake I'll learn from, but it's such a shame and has spoiled the model a bit.

I'm a fool

[Tim Marlow]

Fool, no. Human, yes…….

[Mark1]

We all do it all the time lol
Some delicate parts are best left till last thing before fitting.

[Andy the Sheep]

Steve, if snapping and losing to the Carpet Monster a small part from an almost finished model would be a fool's trademark, then all of us are or have been a first rate fool ... but I don't really need to snap small parts from a model (which I did and still do sometimes) to qualify as a fool, I have much more effective resources in my backpack! :tongue-out3:.

More seriously: what Mark said it's a lesson most of us learned the hard way so don't be so harsh on you, it's a part of a modeller's daily life. :smiling:

[stillp]

Don't worry about it Steve, the users of Jeeps in WW2 had more to care about than repairin snapped mirrors!
Pete