Liquid masking

Felt too lazy to take progress pics lately, but I’ve been working on a few kits – a Najica, TB ninja girl, and an MG Wing 0 and Destiny. with a Gainax Asuka and Reflect Cammy in the background, mixed in with a couple of H kits

This must be obvious to some of you but I only discovered this today – that those brush conditioning liquids can remove liquid masks. Like Delta Ceramcoat brush cleaner, or possibly Brush Aid (haven’t tried tho). Boy I’ve had these chemicals for ages and yet I suffered so long with liquid masks. I usually have trouble applying liquid masks because they are brush destroyers since they never get off, even if you try to wash them off quickly. Since I bought Mr. Neo Sol that comes with a brush inside, I had better luck. Still, sometimes I applied the mask too thinly, and combined with paint layers that are a bit thick, the masks are very hard to remove, took me a lot of time to scrap them off. Well no more. I can now apply the masks with regular brushes, and also use q-tips to rub them off the model. The Najica kit was probably the least painful liquid masking experience I had in ages

Plaques

It’s that time of the year again, when I have to find wooden plaques to use as bases. When I started out, I used the simplest form of wooden base from trophy shops, which are nicely finished and cheap. You have to find a shop that will sell the plaques without engraving service or any adornments, and you can get 4″x6″ or 5″x7″ finished plaques at less than $3-4 apiece. I usually buy lots of 10-15 and it lasts for years, especially since I cease using them for my more recent kits with diorama bases. But now I’m almost out, and I needed a few for my Macross planes, so the hunt begins…

Random tips

It seems I never write anything about modeling ever since I was done with the how-to’s Here are some random bits (warning: very random) I thought that were worth mentioning… perhaps you can enlighten me on some stuff also

• Turpentine is a pretty useful chemical! It dissolves gum, which includes gum-based glue such as 3M spray glues, Elmer’s, and most importantly the latex liquid mask. I used to hate doing liquid mask because if you apply it with a brush, it’s impossible to remove. It takes forever to apply with anything else. But now there’s a remedy to that! I suspect turpenoid and other substitutes would work as well, and less toxic, but I haven’t tried it.
• If you’re looking for an inexpensive router set (i.e. Dremel and clones), sciplus.com has one that I bought for just $30. It’s variable speed and corded, going from 8000-30000rpm. It doesn’t have a whole lot of attachments, but the great thing about it is that it comes with a flex shaft! I was too cheap to get one before, but now I have one, I won’t live without it… it makes detail work easier, and removing flash is a much less painful process!
• You can drybrush with Mr. Color if you thin it purely with Mr. Retarder. Oil is great, but its very slow drying time and weak staying property is sometimes frustrating. With Mr. Color + retarder, you have about 20 seconds of drying time, so you’ve gotta work fast But it does feather pretty nicely.
• Mr. Neo Mask sol from Gunze is my favorite liquid mask of late. I used to buy Modeler’s green mask sol, but the fact that Gunze’s comes with a brush inside the bottle is a big plus – less hassle to clean the thing and apply. It seems Gunze’s is thinner though, and it seems to run a bit. But then it seems like it’s not as easy to gunk up inside the bottle and become useless. This leads to the other reason why I use more liquid mask nowadays, besides the fact that it’s more convenient that masking tape: that all the bottles of liquid mask I own gunk up/solidifies before I finish using half of it. That says to me I should be using them less conservatively…
• I now use Tamiya white surfacer as the primer of choice for figures. I used to use Mr. Base white 1000, which is a bit more opaque that Tamiya. However I’ve a few kits that has Mr. base white cracked and chunks of base white and paint came off. Perhaps I didn’t wash the kit too well, or the base white went on too thick. But anyway, Tamiya doesn’t seem to have this problem, and it’s just convenient to have a spray can primer. Sometimes it just takes too long to prime with an airbrush.
• Castro Super Clean and Simple Green (among others) are all useful as paintstrippers and mold release remover. Castro Super Clean is much stronger however, after some experimentation.
• While Castro Super Clean is great for stripping paint off your glass bottles so that you can reuse them, metal paint lids should not go in. The stuff eats the chrome and any plating off the metal and induces rusting. I ruined more than 10 lids that way