Alfa Romeo Giulietta Spyder, Box Stock Revell of Germany Kit...another red!

[Porsnatic]

This time I will continue my Late 50's-early 60's sport convertibles car series. And for my some of pals here in Puerto Rico that makes a joke on this...yes..it will be painted in red like all the others in this series...jajaja. Besides,..it's almost like a ferrari, what another color could be use in an Alfa Romeo? This a good example of this classic which opened the doors for the classic Giulietta racers series. Although it's named "Giulietta", looking for some reference info and pictures, I found that the model Revell of Germany intended to make was the 1965 "Giulia" and not the late 50's "Giulietta". Anyway, the model looks to be a sharp one, free of exesive flash, a great chrome tree(when I removed the parts by were they were hang, they are connected by a perfect spot that only need a tiny dab of pay to cover the spot), all the doors can be opened(a great feature, considering I will do a box stock model and there's no room for any alterations), a crisp Cartograf decal sheet, and the fact that the model can be done with less of 100 parts covering all the feautured components of this classic car.
First of all I started to paint the engine, chassis, and suspention components that will be in the different shades of black(gloss, semi-gloss, and flat). Again for the glossy parts I trusted on the Gunze Sangyo Lacquer Black, that gives me a perfect thinn and in scale finish of black. The parts were organized since their shades. After all the blacks were painted, I followed with the aluminums, and silvers.


Some challenging masking was needed in order to get the correct color in some parts. This masking is intended for some spots that will be painted later in red. That's a main problem with "just a few parts" kits.







Here I already mounted all the painted parts to the unpainted body to check how it will look and to make any needed adjusment to side doors, trunk, and hood.









A first look to the body on the chassis.




Everything opens now!







Now some color!...among the different shades of reds I have at home, there were a few ones that could be used, but, there were more than I though, so, the task wasn't a piece of cake thinking also that I had used some variations of them(in case of the FINISHERS) in the other cabrios of this series. I chosed the Modeler's Bright Red(actually is a light deep red shade) for different reasons. One of them is the fame of being a great model car paint in Japan(they just made paint for model cars). Another one, although I bought this stuff like 4 years ago, I hadn't give this a try. You guys can see on the back of this first picture the thermometer reading 82!, sorry you guys up there in the north!



The winning red!


Some Gunze MR. Surfacer 1000 gray primer, followed with Gunze MR. White Base in order to bright out the base coat a little bit.




I pre-shaded the body sections that will be covered when I put together all the doors in order to get a uniform red apint coat.







I pre-shaded the body sections that will be covered when I put together all the doors in order to get a uniform red apint coat.








Now everythin' is being put together...











to be continued...

[Ferrari TR]

Looks good.
I can't think of another color when i hear 'Alfa'.

[gionc]

Originally Posted by Ferrari TR

Looks good.
I can't think of another color when i hear 'Alfa'.

Why not? Azzurro chiaro or Bianco...
Great start BTW

[godfather23]

Originally Posted by gionc

Great start BTW

True, true... Thank you for your detailed explanation (step-by-step) regarding the paint process. I´m sure this one will come out nice. How is the chrome of the kit?

Robert

[Ferrari TR]

Not to get too far off.
But when i read 'red' i don't think rossa. Dark blue would be the Fiat my dad had, and i think the first car i ever drove. White will forever be linked to 'JAWS' my mk3 Supra, which btw didn't start yesterday. I guess thats just me...

[Porsnatic]

Thanks a lot foyour kind comments guys!

About the chome tree in this kit, like I mentioned, is onw of the best I ever tried, because, it's not just the queality, if not, that when you cut the part from the tree the spot that remains the color of bare plastic it's too tiny and with just a small touch up of paint do the job. I was ready to Alclaed all the tree, but, it will be not necesary. You guys can see in the step when I first put together the body and the chassis how it looks the wheels.

Originally Posted by godfather23

True, true... Thank you for your detailed explanation (step-by-step) regarding the paint process. I´m sure this one will come out nice. How is the chrome of the kit?

Robert

[jano11]

Very nice!
I'll follow this one closely as I got in the to do stash too.

[Porsnatic]

Not much more it's been added today to this build up, but, here I'm showing how the model being after the red coat of paint was added. Although I have to confess that I wasn't too sure about the performance of this Modeler's paint, since I did a try with a spoon and I didn't like the way it look after. I guess it was due to the fact that I used a Modeler's product I have that is labeled "Thinner retarder". From what the people of Rainbow Ten in Japan told me, this is not Thinner + Retarder, it should be labeled as simply "Retarder". Please, if someone here has more information on this I would like to be sure exactly what is this for. To resolve what I saw in the spoon and to make sure I could use this in the model, I thinned the paint first with of my model cars favorite thinners, Finisher's auto paint thinner. To this, I did a mix with this Finisher's thinner plus the Modeler's Thinner Retarder and a few drops of Gunze Sangyo Mild Retarder to about 10% of the general paint-thinner mix. This gave me one the most impressive paint flows I had experimented until now. Let's see how it performed...


Here we can see how uniform this coat of paint looks with almost not orange peel.



Every rail and detail it's being shown under the paint.








Ahh!!!... the magic of the lacquer!!!



This one remind us the look of the front on the original Batmobile of the 30' or the 40's.



As can be seen here, almost no orange peel.




A look under the direct sun light just to make sure.




A close up that shows how everything matched after I removed all the panels with the first paint shoot in the parts that were covered in order to achieve a uniform color coat.




Panels off!!!

[jano11]

Impressive looking paint.
Thanks for the very accurate description of the process.
Do you plan adding further paint layers?

[axiom]

Looks nice! However I'm curious how did you make the door hinges? are they similar to 1:1 or just a workaround for opening doors?

And also, why on the first pictures, after applying the primer you painted only some parts of the body? why not the whole body at once?

Will be glad to here your answers

[Porsnatic]

Just in some small spots were while I was sanding the paint it has been peel off.

Originally Posted by jano11

Impressive looking paint.
Thanks for the very accurate description of the process.
Do you plan adding further paint layers?

[Porsnatic]

No, tha't the box stock door hinges, tha actually are simple bars that enter through a pair of holes in the door frame.

The answer for both painting questions are explained in the process, I painted just the frames of the trunk, hood, and side doors in order to get an uniform red color when I tape down all these doors and paint the whole body. If don't paint these sections first and tape these doors after, when I lift the tape, if that spots have not been painted first, there's a chace that paint won't match in those spots.

Originally Posted by axiom

Looks nice! However I'm curious how did you make the door hinges? are they similar to 1:1 or just a workaround for opening doors?

And also, why on the first pictures, after applying the primer you painted only some parts of the body? why not the whole body at once?

Will be glad to here your answers

[axiom]

Thanks for your reply. No I'll go do some thinking

[voyageur]

That must be the first time I actually see a WIP of this kit. Great work - and a brilliant idea with the pre-shading of the door sills. Oh.. and great, subtle weathering on engine and undercarriage!

[Porsnatic]

Again, there's not much, but, here some pics of the finished bodywork. It has been one the best finish I've got on a model after I airbrushed the paint, but, some problems with some old black paint inside the airbrush(or maybe in the paint), caused a delay in order to apply the clear coat.

The a real nice mix of the paint-retarder gave me a so nice and even surface that I just saded it with the 4000 polishing pad. Since I was painting this with my magnifier visor, I noticed some tiny black spots that when I tried to remeved beliving it was some debris on the surface, it resulted to be somethin like the remeins of black paint and it was spreaded a little bit. Because of this I was painting and checking continouslly the surface with the visor. I could afford to paint and sand some spots with just 3 minutes waiting time!!!..obviouslly using my dehydrator. Here's how it being.












Like I said before,"Ah, the magic of lacquer", because it didn't covered any detail on this model.