A tip that will make it WAY easier for those of you making custom body kits ...

[integra818]

A tip that will make it WAY easier for those of you making custom body kits out of putty...

When you putty up the body, you wait until it dries than you sand right? When you sand, does'nt the bumper chip a little? Then you have to reputty, and sand agian...

Use Tamiya X-21 flat base to fill up those litte chiped holes. The cap is clear on the bottle.

I hope this tip has helped alot of you and made it easir to do your custom body jobs...

[impreza2k2]

thanks for the info
so how can i apply them on? paint it on with brush or do i have to use airbrush?
thanks

[flyonthewall]

As myself and others have said many times, use styrene!!!! Its not all about slapping on a load of putty and seeing what sticks!

Imagine you are creating a skelton of the bodykit out of styrene, the putty is the flesh, filling in gaps, creating contours and smoothing over areas.

Hope this helps

[pcmodeler]

I agree with Chris. Please don't take this the wrong way, but some of you guys are going pretty heavy on the putty. Either use styrene, or there are other products, such as balsa foam. If you do it right, you may be avle to cast yourself a master from resin. For projects I've done, I've also used balsa wood covered with a thin layer of styrene for the basic shape. I then cast that in resin and do my more detailed shaping on that. Putty is a filler, not a builder.

[espin]

You get much cleaner body lines with styrene. You don't have to end up sanding everything together on your body kit.

[pcmodeler]

The other advantage to using styrene is that nothing else sands like styrene (Duh).

What I mean by this is the following. Different materials have different levels of hardness (Duh again). However, that also means that the softer materials will tend to sand quicker than harder materials. This means you can actually end up removing more of the softer materials than you really intended. A good example is using superglue as a gap filler (which I do all of the time). The superglue, when dry, is harder than the surrounding plastic. This means that when sanding, I will need to work harder to get the superglue to level out to match the plastic, and may result in my removing more of the surrounding plastic than I wanted.

Depending on the putty, it may be harder or softer than the plastic used in making the model.

[erix7]

Originally posted by integra818
A tip that will make it WAY easier for those of you making custom body kits out of putty...

... Use Tamiya X-21 flat base to fill up those litte chiped holes. The cap is clear on the bottle...

I prefer using super glue for filling small dents and chips: Flat Base has no bonding agent, so it
gets powdery and wears off when it has dried.
Super glue gets hard fast, you can sand it some 15 minutes after applying. Don't put a big blob of super glue on the model though and be aware of blooming (white residue on surrounding parts, especially metal bits).

HTH,
-- Eric.

[sugarcaddy]

yeppers I agree with everyone else about strip plastic. Nothing beats it. You can get all sorts of different shapes and designs premade and apply them to your kit.
Not to knock putty-but Ive tried it and IMHO I don't like the feel or texture of the putty. It just doesn't look right and it never turns out right for me. For those that make it work-ROCK ON!
I for one love strip plastic :frog:

Scott

[integra818]

flyonthewall, sometimes styrene won't work and you have to use putty, and when you get a small chip, I would use either the flat base or the superglue like mentioned before.