DocRob

I´m sorry to hear about your and your sons situation, this sounds devastating. Life changes quickly sometimes and you find yourself in a completely unforeseen circumstances. I wish you and your son all the best. Model building is of the least importance, when it comes to serious issues in the family, unless it helps to free the mind, which sometimes can be very helpful. Rob

Very nice, FA, I like it a lot. It seems you are on a slow transition towards high shine car finishes . The reduced weathering looks bueno. Cheers Rob

Thanks PW, no mud this time, the glaring black finish was too much work to cover it under mud and grime. Building a dirty Le Mans car or Rally car sounds tempting though. Cheers Rob

A new kit in town, after hitting the pre order button (You have to be fast with MFH kits, usually the pre order max is reached in some hours after the announcement), I wasn´t so sure about the B194. I´m not a real Schuhmacher fan and as much as I like the cars of the early nineties (post turbo era), I prefer a low nose design. Anyway, now I´m happy and the kit will look vivid beside my Williams FW16 from the same season. Parts count is relatively low for a MFH kit and shouldn´t be too complicated to build. Painting and decaling will be another matter. Cheers Rob

I dug a little further into tinting and found a video, where the guy applied Future before the clear color, followed by another coat of clear. I already tinted the "windshield" of my Lotus 72 with Tamiya´s clear yellow from the inside, which looked a little bit too dull for my liking. I applied a coat of Zero Paints lacquer clear on top, which enhanced the gloss and transparency by far. With the smoke tinted visor it helped a bit, but not as much as with the windshield. Verdict: clear coating is the way to go. Cheers Rob

Nice and smooth paintjob, the interior looks fantastic. Cheers Rob

This update took a while, non the least, because Mr. Fittipaldi was a bit renitent. Actually, it was more the helmet and visor, which gave me headaches. Tamiya provides a driver figure and decals for the helmet, which wouldn´t go on wrinkle free. I used quantities of Tamiya extra strong and a hairdryer, before finally clear coating the helmet. Even more annoying was the visor. I wanted it tinted in smoke, like in real live, but equal which color and technique I used, it came always out bad. I tried AK crystal smoke and Tamiya smoke, sprayed or dipped, with misted layers or heavily applied, it never looked right. Finally, I tried my best, spraying AK crystal smoke lightly in numerous layers onto the before hand Future dipped visor and clear coated it. It still looks poor, but having stripped the visor umpteenth times, there may be no better result. The rest of the Fittipaldi figure was airbrushed and painted with Tamiya acrylics. I also tinted the clear windshield (not on the pictures) yellow, which came out better but not perfect. After a final clearcoat, it looks now very good. If somebody out there has a working technique for tinting larger clear parts evenly, pleas share it. Cheers Rob

I would never use that thing, but six Pounds is a cheapo for singing with the boys Cheers Rob

So you exchanged the results of your purge for a squirrel, good deal, Martin. Cheers Rob

Very nice work, your dio will be a looker. It´s believable busy and coming together nicely. One remark though. On the side of the Tempo´s loading bed there is "Deutsche Bundesbahn" written. This is wrong, because the Deutsche Bundesbahn was the follow up of the Deutsche Reichsbahn (see Tempo´s side doors) and was founded in 1949. Cheers Rob

Muchas gracias amigos, I´m absolutely satisfied with the shiny black finish, which looks even better to the eye than photographed under LED lights. The repaired numbers came out ok, but far from perfect. You can still see, where the bubbles were under certain lighting angles, but I didn´t dare to sand and possibly fill any more. The risk of damaging the finish was too great. There seems to be always something with car finishes . Cheers Rob

Yesterday, I tested the Tamiya #8 onto my affected #6 decal for comparing the size and they fit like a glove, phew. Today was the day to rescue the finish of the Lotus. I took all my courage and cautiously sanded away the bubbles on the number decals with a fiber pen and the edge of a sanding spoon. I was eager not to destroy the underlying golden decals. It looked like this then: I then decided to polish all the body parts with Tamiya polishing compounds. This was ignited, because I watched some of the build videos of the 72D on YouTube and was shocked by the very bad surface quality of some of the paintjobs. I would not dar to show these. I used the coarse compound only on the number decals, which were sanded before and polished all the body parts with the fine- and finish compound. Lastly, I applied the Tamiya #6 decals over the old ones and despite it not looking perfect, it has to do. I´m satisfied with the finish now, with the black glistening like a Steinway grand piano and it looks even better than on the photos. Cheers Rob

Very nice, PW, like the setting and the corrosion on the Chamond, BUT the match is definitely out of scale . Cheers Rob

Thanks Carl, exactly what I need. I checked my usual stores, no luck so far. A trusted Spanish vendor has clear red, green, orange and blue, but not smoke . Cheers Rob

For me as well John, when the parts are relatively small. I´m looking for a solution for a larger area, a tinted car door window or in my actual case a helmets visor. With a brush, I don´t get a perfectly even finish, but maybe it´s just me . I found only metal foil or clear transparent foil from Hasegawa, Carl. Cheers Rob