DocRob

Thank you Carl, it´s not easy to get into some kind of building flow with all the ongoing issues. About the brakes, you could have guessed, there are very prominent venting domes on the nose part of the car, where the brake disks are hidden under. My last build, the Brabham BT45 had also inboard brakes, but only for the rear. Cheers Rob

Some progress at last. I finished the cockpit tub with the seat, fire extinguisher, and paddings and installed it into the body. The front suspension is only temporary installed and proved to be very fiddly to assemble. If it would be movable remains to be seen, but I doubt it, seeing the design. I also installed the radiators with their PE grills into their fairings. I have a lots of mishaps with this build lately, which are no fault of the kit, but mine. I airbrushed the three color front rims for the third time now, always finding some inacceptable flaws. Same with some of the firewalls and inner traverses, where the AK polished aluminum color showed some flaws, possibly a reaction with the plastic, despite being primed with gloss black. Overspraying, this time with Alclad led to the same result and I finally used Tamiya´s LP gloss aluminum, which worked. I´m not used to these kind of issues, I usually plan my approach thoroughly and do it once. Everything there´s something new, even with what looks like routine. Cheers Rob

Guilty as charged, Mike , I´m looking forward to your next (MFH) build. The Gurney-Weslake Eagle was in my sight as well, to my eye, the most beautiful of the cigar shaped racers, congratulations for that good deal. Cheers Rob

Lots of car kits here lately. This beauty arrived today. The Williams FW16 from 1994. I know have three different scaled kits of the car, one in 1/12 scale, one in 1/43, these are from MFH and the new addition in 1/20. I really like F1 cars from the early nineties, post turbo era, preferable with a low nose design, like this one. I added some extras, like new decals with tobacco ads, carbon fiber decals and some photo etch. Cheers Rob

Indeed, very cool, Carl. What about mixing the interceptor with the jet section of the Horten on your desk, would be a nice clash . Cheers Rob

A lot of extra work needed for such a relatively new kit. But is there something like the perfect kit out there Martin? The worst decision might be to allow only for opened cowl and hatches, weird. Cheers Rob

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

Nice find, Carl, the Beamer is a classic. A friend of mine on my island has one as his all day car, but in street trim of course. Hope you find some new decals. Cheers Rob

Nice looking NMF, Kevin, like Carl said, the heat staining looks pretty convincing. Cheers Rob

I watched some videos on YT about tinting clear parts and have to say, the results are not what I´m looking for. The transparency always lacks. The way to apply, seems to be very light coats, like you suggested. I will look, if there are some tinted transparent foils out there for the job. For my visor it could work, for canopies not so. Cheers Rob

Thank you Carl, Kevin and John, I used transparent colors (mostly Tamiya X red, orange, yellow and smoke) on different occasions, like rear lights for cars or formation lights on planes, where I thinned the color and brushed it on with good results. I also used clear yellow and orange to replicate varnish over oil color woodgrain on WWI planes, What I never managed to achieve was to tint let´s say a canopy with keeping the transparent qualities, only tinted. All of you suggest light coats, but when I spray light (thinned or un thinned) the result isn´t transparent, it looks like frosted. Does that go away with multiple coats? With my, I think three light coats, it didn´t change. Fat coats are more transparent and level, but the tinting is never equally applied and I have some pooling. Brushing is no option for larger pieces, as the distribution of the tint isn´t equally over the whole thing. @JohnB: I don´t understand your technique of thinning until the color is opaque, I´m looking for transparency, but only tinted, I guess, I got something wrong and yes, I appley the tinting color always on the inside of the clear part. Cheers Rob