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By E. James Small
Yee-Ha! Round 2 is beginning to reissue some of the original AMT show rods and this offers up a great opportunity for modelers to get creative and have scads of fun with these nostalgic kits. This one, the “Li’l Stogie”, is a wonderfully whimsical, way-out wild-west wagon! It’s also a great example of how you can build a great looking, fun model with basic supplies, so a beginner can get great results at very little expense. In Part 1 of this article, we’ll cover initial assembly, painting and weathering. Later, Part 2 will cover final assembly, finishing touches and decals.
Initial Assembly:
The best way to get started on most kits is to just glue together all the sub assemblies, using the instructions as a guide. You don’t always have to follow the instructions in exact order, just study them, look over the parts and figure out the main things you need to glue together that can be painted as units and then assembled into the finished model in sections.
With almost all car kits we start with the engine. The engine block halves are first. The best types of glue to use are the watery thin types of plastic model cement (like Testors) that come with a brush in the bottle, rather than the thicker stuff that comes in tubes. All you do is lightly put the two pieces together (after test fitting and trimming away and flash or bumps that impede proper line up of parts) and touch the brush around the perimeter of the joint. Capillary action carries the glue into and around the joint and softens the plastic, allowing for a very strong bond. Squeeze the parts together. If some of the softened plastic oozes out, that’s OK, don’t wipe it off just yet, let it dry fully. When it’s dry, you can then carve off or sand down the excess plastic and it makes for a seamless joint. Just be careful when handling the parts not to get the glue on your fingers or you’ll leave permanent fingerprints all over the model, anywhere you touch it!
Holding the parts together until the glue dries can sometimes be a problem. Before you apply glue, plan how to do this for the specific parts. You can use rubber bands, clothespins or tape. Here, in Figure 1, black electrician’s tape is used to hold the two haves of the bonnet together. This tape is good because it stretches, so a nice pressure is kept on the parts, holding the joint together firmly until the glue dries.
When you get all your sub assemblies put together, you need to clean up the joints. You can use needle files, cheaply available at most hardware stores. Needle files are great for modeling because they are fine-toothed and small, and come in many shapes for different areas. (Hint: To keep the file from clogging, rub chalk all over the teeth before using it!) In fig. 3, a file is being used to clean up the sprue (the correct name for what some people call the “Tree” or “Runner”) attachment point area of the car’s frame. Sometimes you can just scrape the blade of your hobby knife along the joint too, if neatness isn’t as much of a concern, or when there is texture, like on the top of the wagon’s bonnet, where normally sanding or filing might remove too much of the desired texture.
Painting:
When your sub-assemblies are all done, it’s time to start painting! First, wash the parts in a mild solution of dishwashing detergent and water and allow them to air-dry. This removes the grease from your fingers as well as any possible mold-release agent left over from the injection molding machine.
This model is a great example of a kit that can be done by just hand-painting with an ordinary paint brush, but for speed and better consistency I opted to spray paint them. The parts are held with clamps, sticks etc, so they can be sprayed. Sometimes I will even drill a hole into a part if I know that side will never be seen, so I can mount it onto a stick. Then I sprayed the parts using ordinary “rattle-cans” of spray paint. If you’re using spray cans specifically made for model kits like Testors or Tamiya, you can just spray them as is. If you’re using “department store” paint, you would be wise to prime the parts first, using a cellulose based primer. Some spray paints can “craze” the plastic. Krylon brand paints work well and dry fast. Just make sure you dust the paint on with very light coats. Fig. 3 shows some of the parts freshly sprayed.
With most of the painting done, it was time to finish the subassemblies, attaching the remaining parts. Then I tried test fitting everything together.
OOPS!
As with most model kits, especially older ones, sometimes you will find an incompatible fit of some major components. In this case (Fig.4), the transmission of the car was going to keep the floorboards of the “cockpit” from resting properly on the frame, so I had to hack away at the top of the transmission so the parts would fit. This is OK though, since, once the model is built, you won’t see that section anyway. This is why with ANY model kit you will always need to constantly test-fit parts at every stage in construction to find out these kinds of little problems before you get too far along.
Weathering:
After the parts are given their main colour coat, you can weather the paint to make it more interesting, lifelike and bring out the texture. There are probably more ways to weather a model than there are models, so I’ll cover the easiest ones here. One is a “wash” and the other is “dry-brushing”.
A wash consists of mixing a small amount of paint with a large amount of paint thinner. About a 10 parts thinner to 1 part paint, usually black or dark gray or a color that is significantly darker than the base color. Doing a wash can be tricky if you’re not careful, because if you use the same paint for the wash that you used for your main color, or you could end up washing off the main color coat. Therefore it’s important to take the following into consideration:
You can use an acrylic wash on an enamel basecoat.
You can use an enamel or acrylic wash on a lacquer basecoat.
You can sometimes use an enamel wash on an acrylic basecoat, but test it first.
If you use an acrylic basecoat, you can use an acrylic paint for your wash but you must thin it with water. Normally, acrylic paints are thinned with Methyl Hydrate (alcohol). Water is more difficult to use because it beads. Methyl Hydrate does not have the same surface tension properties as water, so it won’t bead like water does. Enamel paints must be thinned with Varsol.
If you are unsure, do some testing first on a piece of scrap plastic, unused kit part or a piece of sprue from the kit.
The wash can be applied in large quantities with a wide (about ¼” to ½” or so) brush, to the point where it is almost dripping off the parts. The wash collects in the small nooks and crannies of the surface, accentuating the texture (Fig 5). If desired, you can also wipe off the surfaces as the wash dries, further highlighting the raised areas.
I also used the wash to knock back the excessive brightness on the chrome parts too, to make them a bit more realistic and less “toy-like” The one on the left in Fig. 6 is before the wash, the one on the right shows how the wash effects the chrome finish.
If you find the wash is still inadequate, or you are not comfortable with trying the wash, you can try dry-brushing. This is almost the opposite of a wash. For dry-brushing, you use a LIGHTER colored paint applied to your wide brush, then dab the excess paint off on a piece of paper or similar until the paint on the brush is almost dry. Then, lightly rub your brush across the surface of the parts which will deposit the paint on the raised detailing on the surface, making a highlight. Repeat the application until the desired intensity or effect is achieved. I used both the wash and the dry-brushing technique for the wood-grained areas on the kit for the effect you see here on the finished model. (Fig 7)
For the chrome pipes, I decided to add a bit of "bluing" that you sometimes see on overworked chrome exhaust pipes, so the ends of the pipes closest to the engine were dipped in transparent light blue acrylic paint and allowed to dry. (Fig. 8)
And there you have it! In the second half of this article, we'll complete the final assembly and related finishing touches, and then we’ll get down with the decals! Stay tuned!
EjIMBo.
E. James Small
Excellence In Model Building
www.smallartworks.ca
All photography by E. James Small
