perferences for epoxies

would anyone like to share their favorite brand of epoxy to use for scratch building kits? i'm debating between tamiya and milliput. haven't tried the milliput but i've had bad experience with tamiya's brand. any comments?

a.

i love the tamiya smooth type. i haven't tried milliput or tamiya quick type.

what happened when you used the tamiya stuff?

For some reason I could never get the Tamiya Epoxy "quick-type" (the blue and white bar) to mix properly. I cut equal strip of both compound, mix and roll but it doesnt seem to harden enough :o

Another nice stuff for building / filling is called "SSP-HG". It's a mix of superglue + some powder stuff and is used by Japanese modelers. This stuff dries to a nice hard surface and sandable in ~ 20 minutes.



A similar result can be achieved by mixing regular superglue + talcum baby powder. Seriously... :alien:

http://www.geocities.co.jp/Playtown-Toys/4017/5souko/ssp/ssp.jpg

20minutes?! You serious? that's pretty good. I'm getting tired of waiting for 12 hours for the tamiya smooth type!

Originally posted by hiver77
For some reason I could never get the Tamiya Epoxy "quick-type" (the blue and white bar) to mix properly. I cut equal strip of both compound, mix and roll but it doesnt seem to harden enough :o

Another nice stuff for building / filling is called "SSP-HG". It's a mix of superglue + some powder stuff and is used by Japanese modelers. This stuff dries to a nice hard surface and sandable in ~ 20 minutes.



A similar result can be achieved by mixing regular superglue + talcum baby powder. Seriously... :alien:

http://www.geocities.co.jp/Playtown-Toys/4017/5souko/ssp/ssp.jpg

yup SSP-HG is good stuff, ive pretty much stop using putty. it has the great property of fast curing and good adheion of CA glue but the microballoons makes it easy to sand. even though its good stuff i wouldnt reconmend using it for body kit, this stuff can get pretty pricy.

Originally posted by turbos86
20minutes?! You serious? that's pretty good. I'm getting tired of waiting for 12 hours for the tamiya smooth type!

it actually dries much fast than that, maybe a minute or so, but if you need a longer pot life you can add the fixative. and if your really impatient just hit it with an accelerator and you can work on it imediately. im not sure how well SGTP(super glue talcum powder) but ive tried it with baking soda and it catalyzed almost imediately, almost not time to work with it.

BTW the white powder is glass(i suspect) microballoons

Originally posted by Ragnarok043


yup SSP-HG is good stuff, ive pretty much stop using putty. it has the great property of fast curing and good adheion of CA glue but the microballoons makes it easy to sand. even though its good stuff i wouldnt reconmend using it for body kit, this stuff can get pretty pricy.

yeah, that thing in the pic costed my $13 (bought from a US supplier).

The green/white tamiya epoxy is not the quick type, but the smooth type, and I too could never get it to harden fully. It didn't lend itself well to sanding. The quick type (brown/white) on the other hand sands beautifully and hardens in about 4 hours.

i get the same results with the green and white tamiya epoxy. it never seems to harden properly and would crack off when i try to sand and file it. i've heard that milliput is the stuff to use when making custom parts for models. however, there maybe three to four different types and it gets pretty confusing on which one is best (not to mention the price differential between the varieties).

i also heard of super glue and talcom powder as some of you here posted. however, i don't think that it would work very well for custom parts as they would be only workable in small amounts due to the fast curing time.

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Originally posted by appleseed
i get the same results with the green and white tamiya epoxy. it never seems to harden properly and would crack off when i try to sand and file it. i've heard that milliput is the stuff to use when making custom parts for models. however, there maybe three to four different types and it gets pretty confusing on which one is best (not to mention the price differential between the varieties).

i also heard of super glue and talcom powder as some of you here posted. however, i don't think that it would work very well for custom parts as they would be only workable in small amounts due to the fast curing time.

a.

Pheew... :D
I thought I was retarded coz I could never get the white-green stuff to harden.

Anyway, been working on some bodykit work (adding some front lip to a S15 front bumper) and for me the formula seems to be:
- styrene for the base foundation. Trace out the design that you need (in my case I trace the 2D shape of the original front lip) and cut the styrene out
- use polyester putty to build the shape. I use this since it's easier to form and long hardening time
- sand / smooth the putty surface
- at this point I always get small crevices in the putty surface. To fill them I use the SSP-HG (CA glue + powder) since it always give a nice hard surface.
- sand / smooth and prime :cool:

I imagine if I could get an epoxy putty to work, I could probably forego the polyester and SSP-HG stuff.

hmm... i've never tried polyester putty. what brand do you use? thanks in advance!

a.

Mori Mori (the yellow one, smells bad) and Tamiya's (the green one). I like Tamiya's better as it seems to goes smoother and less tacky.

I've used Tamiya epoxy putty " quick type" it works well. I bought milliput but haven't used it yet.

thanks for the responses. i've got so frustrated with the tamiya epoxy on my last kit that i ended up gluing styrene together and ended up carving what i needed out of it. for those of you that use bondo, what texture does it come out as and could you use it as an alternative to polyester putty?

a.

Personally, I hate milliput. It's incredibly messy, and if you use water to smooth it, it sort of dissolves and really messes up the surrounding areas. Even worse if it oozes into panel lines.

Has anybody tried using heat to cure the Tamiya smooth type putty? Or is the reaction not endothermic and requires a completely different catalyst?

daggerlee: I'm not sure if the reaction is endothermic, but I chucked a body with a ton of it in my food dehydrator set to about 115 degrees and left it overnight. By the time I woke up it was rock hard. I had used about 1/2 - 2/3 of the entire blue/white epoxy on a single body (kit/wing/fender flares) and had to move down to lower grit sandpaper and sanding sticks to bite into it enough. It was just killing my fingers trying to use the higher grit.

Hm, encouraging results Mike. :)

speaking of endothermic putties, does anyone know of any non-endothermic reactive putties besides tamiya? i'm getting more and more exasperated at the choices out there. i've used a two part expoy that was meant for plumbing once... just decided to try it since i was at the hardware store anyway, and it worked out great. it was something from ace hardware and it dried in a couple of hours and sands very well... unfortunately, it was discontinued and i've been searching for the right medium for custom works for a while.

one last note, has anyone noticed that the tamiya epoxy dries really brittle? i got this result from once out of the two times i've tried tamiya epoxyies. either it doesn't dry or dries very brittle and won't hold shape.

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