Having been building kits for so many years, I’m a little embarrassed that I’ve only learnt of these great products just now. But they’ve massively improved my model building experience recently.
- Proxxon sander: I’ve mentioned this in one of my previous posts, but the tool keeps reminding me how much my hands are not already dead because of it. One tip I’ve learned from using the Gunze toothbrush sander is that you can back the sandpaper with a 3M wall mounting cushion tape to soften the sanding and reduce scratch marks on the model.
- Weld-on 3: Due to the volume of styrene kits I’m building lately I’ve re-started my pursuit of a better glue. Tamiya and its thin cement are not bad, but they simply aren’t strong and fast enough. Seeing mentions of Weld-on 3 and people have been using it for ages. It acts very quickly so it can only be applied via capillary action, but it forms strong bonds very quickly and you can very reliably produce gapless seams.
- Tamiya panel wash: I used to think that it was unnecessary and expensive, but the panel wash was better formulated than my mineral spirits + enamel solution so that they flow better, and the built in brush was a great precise applicator not to mention convenient. I can’t go without this anymore.
It lasts a long time unless you forgot to cap the bottle and then proceed to shake it… Happened to me many times! So now I instead use a paint stirrer to do the mixing.
- Badger paint stirrer: I’ve been using old paint brushes to stir paint, and was of the opinion that the paint stirrer was unnecessary and hard to clean. How wrong I was. The metal shaft is easy is wipe clean, the motorized action mixes paint evenly faster.
Totally worth the $10.
- Electric toothbrush: this is probably unnecessary if you have the proxxon sander, but I like the fact that I can use a different grit.
I was too lazy to do the mod so I bought the gunze ready made one for $10, but it was really, really easy to make if you pull out all the bristles and cut out sandpaper mini discs and mount them using 3m wall mounting tape.
