Plastic Model Building Tips and More
Modeling Tips: Creating Round Masks
Painting On The Tree - by Al Jones
How to remove parts from sprue trees
This month's tip takes the form of a free download so that you can easily print it for viewing offlline. To view this file, you'll need the free Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer. To learn how to safely remove parts from sprue trees, download October's Plastic Model Building Tips here.
Plastic Modeling Painting Tips: Creating Round Masks
Creating round masks can be done with a little masking tape, some aluminum foil and a hole punch.
First, attach a strip of masking tape to a slightly larger piece of aluminum foil. Then, using a hole punch, punch a hole through both the tape and the foil.
If the foil and masking tape are too flexible for the punch to go through completely, insert an index card behind the foil. The foil acts as a backing for the tape.
Simply peel the foil from the tape and stick the masking tape disc where you need it. You can also use this tape/foil method to create masks for larger circles using circle templates and a sharp knife.
A Trader's View
By Gerald Voigt of Hawkeye's Hobbies
Donald E. Stephens Convention Centre, Rosemont (Chicago), Illinois, USA was the site for the 2006 iHobby Expo, an event to showcase to the retailers and public the new products in the hobby industry. Here are my thoughts on this year’s event.
This year I felt the full spectrum of emotions, from elation to sadness. It was great to be back on the floor of the Mecca of US hobbyists. The displays, the sounds and the people provided hours of education and entertainment. Yet, noticeably, there were fewer displays and sadly fewer people.
For scale modellers, the noticeable absence of Tamiya and Dragon, coupled with no aftermarket giants like Eduard, cast an overtone on the event. Those who were there brought hope that the hobby will return to its once commanding presence. This event really emphasized the position scale modelling has taken amongst the other aspects of the hobby industry, falling backwards to about fourth place of importance.
MRC was close to the front of the exhibit, having the ability to capitalize on their R/C and model railroad categories, both of which dominated over scale modelling. Spread throughout the show were the ‘tools of the trade’ vendors like Iwata, Xuron, Excel, Paasche, Zap and X-acto, to name a few. These folks and their products transcend categories yet they share our pain too. All were optimistic about the future, which was refreshing and encouraged everyone who took the time to exchange ideas and insights.
I’m looking forward to next year’s event. In the coming months the associations, manufacturers and promoters will have to compare notes and come up with a strategy to bring back the attendees and those who elected not to attend. In my humble opinion, these are challenges worth tackling to cement success for the future of the hobby industry — not just scale modelling.
November's Feature:
Perfect Seams - Part 1, by Gerald Voigt
As I evolved as a modeler one of the first areas I wanted to improve on was seams. Aircraft fuselage seams can be the most unsightly flaw in an otherwise great build.
A seam should be as smooth as the surfaces surrounding it, and be as realistic as its 1:1 master. I've found the best way to mate two components together is to weld them. Using a solvent applied through an applicator works best for me. It is only one method to apply solvents. You could also brush them on, but you take the chance of leaving brush strokes in the surface.
A smooth seam, like the one pictured here, allows for easy scribing of missing or removed panel features. A properly mated seam, like this one, has no pockets or holes along the seam. It's as solid as the rest of the piece. Like a good weld in steel, it penetrates all the way through. Ever try to lay a decal over a dip or ridge on the surface? With this method, flaws can be repaired more easily with less damage to surrounding details and features.
We need to have some basic tools to use. Here is a picture of what I used to do this article.
Step one:
Removal of a part from the sprue itself
NEVER EVER break a part off the tree. 
Use a sprue cutter, cut with a knife while pressing against a safe surface (self healing pad), or saw it off. Super fine razor saws are becoming the rage. They provide a flush clean cut, needing only a tad of touch up, which can be done with a polishing stick.
Test fitting
This is something you'll do a dozen times before even considering mating the two surfaces together. 
The two surfaces, especially on fuselage halves, must be square.this] [ not this > < or this } { or even this } [. You get the idea. If you are a modeler who wants exact scale, for example . the width of the fuselage and you test fit and tape together to check dimensions and find it too narrow, you can add a strip of styrene between the halves. To widen, you'll need to sand it down, but I personally don't go that far unless it is grotesquely obvious. From a couple feet away, who's going to notice a 1/48 scale model missing four or less scale inches or about the width of two of your fingerprint ridges?
Alignment
True up the halves as best you can. Sanding on a full sheet of paper secured to a thick piece of plate glass or a metal surface is my method. I have an extension to an industrial table saw that is made of cast iron and machined. It is perfect for laying out sandpaper. I use magnets to hold the paper down while I sand.
Locator pins not locating? Lop them off with your X-Acto knife. They are not needed. Unless the model is one of those shake-the-box kits, the pins usually don't accurately line up anyway. I use pieces of masking tape and my thumbnail to align the pieces. Once everything is lined up to my satisfaction, I start the welding process.
Welding
Welding plastic with solvents dissolves the plastic just enough to melt the two pieces in contact together, just as a welding rod does with metal. This forms a stronger, gap-free bond. My particular solvent of choice is Weld-on 3. When I need a cooler or slower solvent I use Tenax. I use a Touch-n-Flow applicator to apply the solvents. A brush can be used and at times its use is appropriate to attach small parts where you don't want any solvent residue marks around the part.
This is the end of Part 1. Make sure you've subscribed to our newsletter so that we can let you know as soon as Part 2 is posted to the site.
September's Feature:
Painting On the Tree - by Al Jones, Milwaukee, WI
There's nothing unusual in the practice of painting first. There are some advantages which I will list. But, the hardest part for most people who try the system is choosing a proper kit.
Since you will not be removing most of the pieces from the trees before beginning to paint, you must have some reassurance in your mind that the thing is going to fit well, or you will end up removing all the paint in sanding, and fitting once you start assembly. So, pick a kit that has a good reputation for excellent fit as your first move.
Then, there are some parts that have sprue attachments on the exterior surfaces of the model. The new Razor Saw from Unique Master Models, which will be available soon here, at Hawkeye's Hobbies, will remove 95% of sprue attachment plastic. But, some sanding will always be necessary on these places.
So, what I do is to cut the sprues into 2 inch sections which can then be glued somewhere onto the inside of the part where it won't be seen on the finished model.
I use alligator clips to hold the sprue sections while I'm painting the parts which can then be stuck on a toothpick set upright in a piece of foam board (Styrofoam) while the part dries. The rest of the parts stay on the trees protected from handling fingerprints and other flotsam and jetsam until the paint is dry.
I should probably say something about sanding any plastic surface that will later be painted. If you want the paint on the sanded surface to look like the paint on unsanded surfaces, you need to make the sanded area look like unsanded plastic. I have pieces of wet or dry sand paper in my collection with grits from 400 down to 2000 which is available at auto paint stores.
But, even paper that fine is not enough. I use finger nail polishing sticks to bring the plastic surface up to the same gloss as it had coming out of the mold. You know the ones: they are multi-colored with the final buffing surface always a smooth gray color.
Start buffing with the rough surface; that'll take out most of the sandpaper scratches. Then buff with the intermediate surface . . . many times this is the white surface. Finally, buff with the smooth gray surface and your sanded plastic will be ready for paint. One warning on the polishing sticks: watch out for rubbing in too much heat where the polisher will begin to break down.
The rest of the parts on the trees can then be painted immediately. The razor saw will take the parts off the trees after the paint dries with minimal touchup required.
Sometimes I touch up with the airbrush and other times with a hand held paint brush. Just a little dab'll do ya'! I no longer use nippers or shears for removing parts from trees.
These tools crush/damage the plastic in your model if you cut close enough and sometimes those spots need to be fixed later. I don't like to have to fix later.
OK! Everybody's model building nightmare is fuselage seams and the leading and trailing edge seams. You need to have some philosophy here. My philosophy here is the KISS principle. You know, keep it simple s______!
I hate fillers of all kinds and avoid using them with a passion. If fillers are necessary (remember that when you choose a kit you are choosing one that fits well; so, you shouldn't need fillers), use whatever you've become accustomed to: melted plastic, body filler, epoxy, super glue. Smooth the filled area with sanding or whatever your normal procedure is. Finish off with a polishing stick. If your filler is softer than the surrounding plastic, you may want to spray a coat of primer which you can then sand down and polish after the primer dries thoroughly.
Warning: NEVER use the intermediate and final polishing surfaces of a polishing stick on PAINT.
So, with regard to seams, in order to avoid using fillers, you need good parts fit, you need to get into the habit of carefully dry fitting parts to see if any tweaking is necessary before assembly, and you need to learn how to glue parts together in a way that produces plastic "bubble-up" along the seams. I use a "Touch-n-Flow" applicator with Weld On #3 liquid solvent for my glue. Good solvents will melt the surfaces to be attached sufficiently so that some of the plastic in the seam will "bubble up" from the seam when the parts are pressed together. It's a good idea to use some kind of clamping system here so that the bubbled-up plastic does not sink back into the seam. Let the bubbled-up plastic dry thoroughly, a couple of days, and then slice off the bubbled-up plastic with a new #11 X-acto blade. Wallah! No seam to fill.
Protect the paint along the seam with tape. Currently, I'm using Tamiya's masking tape because it comes off clean--it does not leave any adhesive residue on your paint. Another good tape is from 3M; it is the stretchable plastic masking tape used by house painters. Sand the seam lightly between the tape edges. Polish the seam and after removing the tape, touchup the area with your airbrush.
Why use this method? You never handle painted parts until they are thoroughly dry.
Fingerprints do not show up on these painted parts. During the assembly process, you are not stopping, starting, forgetting what you were doing because you have to paint and then wait for the paint to dry. You just proceed through the assembly process one step after the other. It is like you used to do when you were 9 or 10 years old and you put a kit together in one afternoon. It is much easier to remove paint from surfaces to be glued after the paint is dry then it is to try to remove the paint from those surfaces while the part is sticking to your other hand. Some guys struggle with touch up after the parts have been removed from the trees. For me, I figure I'm going to have to do some touch up anyway. Why not do it in an organized, logical way.
That's it. No secrets. No special skills. Just straight forward model building. Ah! I can smell plastic. I'm gone!