How do you paint a plastic model...

He's not the only one with this question, I'd love to know as well. Is there a good resource site somewhere with howto's etc?

 

Try Italian horses. It is the Alex Kustoff's site (not shure if I spelled his name right). I think it is italianhorses.com . He is the best Ferrari builder in 1:24 scale I have ever seen. He had some articles in magazines and I can imagine that there are some on his site too.

 

http://italianhorses.net/Tutorials/tutorials.htm

There's quite a few tutorials here, lots of great info.

 

WOW! Thanks, great site!

 

Be very very careful with them. All I'm going to say is that they(Tamiya) don't mold the same plastic kit in different color plastic for no reason.
Any well stocked hobby shop should carry them

 

Here's a list of various tutorials for modeling.

http://www.automotiveforums.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=215864

 

If you mess it up or you don't like the way it turned out soak the part in Pinesol , the paint will lift right off the model and you can start over. I've done this with diecast and plastic models and it works. I've changed railroad paint schemes on some of my locomotives and I soak in model in Pinesol to remove the paint so I won't lose the detail that happens when you kept addng coats over old paint.

 

you can use a tamiya paint. best to go to a good hobby/model shop.there are many many colors to choose from. you can order over the internet but you really don't save anything and it is difficult to verify the color unless you are ordering a color you have already worked with. the finish is almost to good. what i use for red and dark green is good old duplicolor from your nearby auto supply store.. you will need to polish it out with three grades of compounds but the final finish after several coats can give a very good deep luster. it is more work but the final result is the best. it will also take some practice to get it right so if you are in a hurry go with the tamiya. there are also super quality finishes with curing times into months. usually the people at a good model store will be experienced model builders and can help you. Yellow is probably the most difficult to get right. the yellow used by Ferrari is excelent and you can try to find a close match by using a good color photo of the car. good luck tongascrew

 

+1, PineSol is excellent for removing paint.

 

Back in the 60s, we used to paint all kinds of models with Testors paints. Burgandy Purple metal flake, candy apple red metal flake, transparent blue, transparent red,...etc. Crazy colors were in vogue. I never understood all the obsession with sanding either. There is probably some merit to sanding the coat of paint after it is laid down, because the paint can go on rather rough. But as you say, the plastic is very smooth. We never bothered with sanding the bare body. Being only 10 years old along with most of my friends, our model building probably wasn't world class, but we did pay close attention to the details. Transparent paints require a white base coat. We hated those cheaper models that did not come with rubber tires. Some came with plastic tires that we had to paint with flat black to look realistic. We used black thread for spark plug wires. If you're gluing chrome parts, you have to scrape the chrome down to bare plastic or the glue will not hold. To do a proper job on a car, you have to have many different colors of paint for all the various parts. I can remember cutting out small pieces of celluloid plastic to use as lenses on the goggles of the driver that I placed behind the wheel of one of my funny car models. We didn't have much money to spend but we tried our best for authenticity. That was back when most 1/24 or 1/25th scale model cars sold for $2. We weren't pleased when they went up to $2.25. When one of us went to the store and found several good models but could only afford one of them, we would hide the other models WAY in the back of another section so that nobody else could buy it except us at a later date. If we found a
"Hemi Under Glass" Barracuda or a "Mr. Unswitchable" GTO that we couldn't afford, we would take it out of the model car section and hide it in the back behind all the WWII aircraft models so that no other car guy would find it.

 

Well things have changed more than you can imagine in the model-car-world, but the basics and the feeling are the same . No mather if you are 10years old or 40.