Thursday, May 24, 2012

The search for a decal safe clear coat

After the nightmare with the clear coat, I was wondering what caused the decal to dissolve in the clear coat. Could that be the decal softener that I put on? I dig around and found in a forum that a lot of people had problem with Tamiya TS13 clear coat and Cartograf decals. That was exactly the same combination! A wet coat over naked decal will destroy them! Some people recommend Mr. Hobby. Let's see how Mr. Hobby turn out.

Saturday, May 12, 2012

BAR 006 10

Horrified to see the clear coat dissolved the decals... Major, major setback.
My only choice now is to strip and repaint the who thing, and redo all the decals.

BAR 006 9

Washing and detailing my Nissan 350Z used to be my therapy. Every Saturday, I drive down to a coin-op car wash place in Cambridge and then spend hours washing and waxing the thing. I can completely forget about the entire world for a good couple of hours and then drive home in a shiny car. Well, that car is long gone, and I am not going to spend my time washing and waxing the Subaru. Now, my only escape from reality is building model cars. Even today, when I should have been studying for my PMP exam, I spend the entire evening putting decals on the car. I desperately need to escape from reality today, some old baggage came back to haunt me.

The result: all decals on the body are done. I'll let it dry overnight, rinse it tomorrow and then clear coat.

Sunday, May 6, 2012

BAR 006 8

My ultra-slow progress continues. Only managed to put on a couple decals this weekend.


One major issue for this car is the lack of reference out there. I have been trying to gather as much photographs as possible through internet search, browse through F1 websites to look for 2004 Japanese GP pictures, bought 2 old copies of F1 Modeling. Still, information is very limited. Reference is always hard to find for cars in the middle and the back markers. It's even worse when the car has tobacco sponsor's advertising on.

For GP winning cars and championship winning cars, there are plenty of pictures. But there are other cars on the grid too. A lot of them are beautiful machines that just did not win a lot of races. They deserve a bit of coverage in the press.

Received the FDS Porsche in the mail. Very disappointed. Should have learned that FDS' quality from previous kits. To make matters worse, the car is the white 1976 number 5 Kremer-Vaillant Porsche 935, not exactly the green one that I am looking for. The casting is terrible. Not sure what I should do with it. And I am not going to worry about it until I finish this BAR 006.