Now that you can recognize the defects in kit plastic and know about the different types of filler materials you're probably asking yourself "how do I smooth and shape this rough blob of putty, it looks awful!?" Well, that's where tools come in to play. Anything from a toothpick to an old credit card can become a makeshift tool and in this installment of the Preparing for paint series I will discuss a variety of different tools and their uses.
Sandpaper
Pros:
- Readily Available
- Can be folded or rolled to various shapes
- Can be used wet or dry
- Flexible
- Many grades available for fine work
Cons
- May clog and degrade quickly on large jobs
When it comes to preparing parts for paint you won't get very far without a good supply of sandpaper. My personal preference is 3M wet/dry auto body sandpaper which can be found in the auto parts store near the Bondo and other body repair materials. I keep packs of 400, 600, & 800 on hand for general sanding and a small pack of 220 and 2000 grit for specialty jobs such as grinding down resin pour stubs for the former and smoothing car bodies prior to primer for the latter. Sandpaper is a very versatile tool in that it can be folded or rolled to gain access to various crevices, can be folded around objects such as erasers and small chips of balsa wood to make a small sanding block, and can even be suspended on a wire frame such as the
Flex-I-File for sanding round bars such as exhaust pipes and roll bars
Files
Pros:
- Holds shape
- Good for work in corners and other odd shapes
- long handles good for reaching back in to jet engine nacelles and the like
Cons:
- Can be expensive depending on which set you buy
- May be too coarse for some work
- Not disposable therefore must be cleaned
Files are best used when you need to maintain a profile such as a round
hole or getting in to the corners of a rectangular opening. Files are
available in several profiles from traditional flat to more specific
such as half round, round, square, and triangular and come in several
degrees of coarseness and sizes. A good set such as
this one
from Micro Mark will run about $10 plus shipping and should be a part
of every builders bench eventually. Some sets have curved ends and long
handles. These are known as
riffler files
and work wonders for sanding seams in tight spots you may not be able
to reach with your fingers such as deep inside jet engine nacelles and I
would recommend having a set of these on hand as well as the standard
Swiss files listed above.
Sanding Sticks
Pros:
- Readily available
- Inexpensive
- Disposable
- Good for maintaining flat surfaces
- Many grades available
Cons:
- Cannot be used in areas with alot of detail
- General purpose, cannot be used in tight areas or small surfaces
Sanding sticks are more commonly known to folks outside the modeling community as emery boards or nail boards and as those names suggest they are found inexpensively and in bulk in the cosmetics section of the drug store. Sanding sticks are available in most of the grades that sandpaper is, however it is mounted to a rigid stick making it a useful tool for sanding surfaces you need to keep flat as stand alone sandpaper may round over the edges or make a angle if you are not careful. I use the pink board for most work which is equivalent to 400 grit sandpaper. For ultra fine work such as repairing scratches in clear parts sanding sticks are also available in a four sided style known as a "buffing stick" or "polishing stick". The first two grits are somewhat coarse and intended to knock down ridges while the last two are a polishing grade which feels more like cloth than sandpaper which will buff the surface to a glossy shine.
Sheet Styrene .005-.010
Sheet styrene if you have any laying around can become a good putty applicator when cut in to thin strips. If you're just starting out or don't deal with a whole lot of scratch building chances are you won't have any on hand. The free option which is essentially the same material is an old credit or bank card. You'd be cutting them up anyway so why not put them to good use? The great thing about the plastic card materials is it can be trimmed to all kinds of tapers and sizes and can even be filed to a chisel tip allowing precise applications of filler materials as well as being fairly cheap to free which makes them ideal as a disposable tool.
Business Cards
Business cards work the same way as plastic card but are slightly more absorbent and a little bit less versatile as they can't be filed to chisel like tips however they are free or bought pretty cheaply at a office supply store and extremely abundant.
Toothpicks
Toothpicks are a modelers best friend. These little pieces of wood serve so many purposes from simple glue application to supporting assemblies and make pretty handy mixers and filler applicators. In addition to performing as a handy disposable applicator, toothpicks can also fall in to the shaping tool category since they can be carved in to numerous shapes or left as is to manipulate wet putty in to crevices of folds such as figure clothing or dinosaur skin. The round pointed types can also be used as a makeshift pick to carve dry putty to shape around the same surfaces and their edges can be used to smooth over rough edges near sharp angles. Every well stocked bench should have a hefty supply of both flat and round types on hand.
Hobby Knife
Pros:
- Interchangeable blade allows for a variety of jobs
- Can be used to carve, scrape, and whittle
- Can get in to small areas and crevices
Cons:
- Possibility of removing too much material if care is not taken
- Blades may break
The hobby knife is one of the do it all tools when it comes to modeling. With it's interchangeable blades a hobby knife can become a knife, scraper, chisel, or any variety of other tools. The two blades I use most for preparing parts for paint are the standard #11 which find their use in removing excess sprue attachments, scraping mold lines, and shaping putty and the #17 which is a flat chisel type blade useful for removing raised ejector pin marks on flat surfaces. There is a wide variety of other types on the market and the only way to decide weather you truly need them or not is to experiment and see what fits your personal style best.
Dental Picks
You don't really need these (I/E you would be lost without them) but I find them handy for shaping small amounts of putty in compact areas and sculpting Milliput on figures. A set can be obtained for as low as $3-6 online or in any drug store, however if you ask politely and tell them what you plan to use them for your dentist may be willing to give you a set of their old ones they no longer use for free which is how I obtained my set.
In the final installment of this series you will see how all of these tools and filler materials come together to give your model a great base for it's upcoming paint job.
<<< Part II Part IV >>>
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