Am poking around the bags of parts in the 2005 repop of the Monogram
"Big T". Lots and lots of chrome pieces. Curious as to how to make
the seam for the large chrome tank a little less noticeable, There
are at least 5 bags of chrome with this 17" monster.
Silver paint has no gloss to it and will stand out like a grey line
along the chrome. have never used foil. Will that stuff really work
on thin seams? Is foil removable if your attempts at application
suck?
How do you car builders deal with chrome ? I am an old plane and
target builder where battle damage and mud could hide any error.
Won't work in this case.
Thx all - Craig
Well Craig, my way is kinda expensive but I'd strip the chrome, glue the parts
together, file/sand/ what ever it took to make the
seam disappear, then send the part to Chrometech for rechroming.
Anyhow, that's how I did it, especially if I was putting the car in a contest of
if building for another individual.
Mike
The other way to deal with the seam would be to strip the chrome, fill,
prime, and use Alclad Chrome over a black gloss acrylic base. The stuff is
amazing.
True. This is how most folks I know in local clubs handle the
problem. If you do not like acrylic, you can use Alclad Chrome over
black enamel also.
One thing to watch with Alclad- do not get CA kicker anywhere near
it. That stuff to accelerate CA setting ruins Alclad.
I agree with all of the above, i.e. for show, chrometech, for your own
enjoyment, Alclad.
If you're dead set on foiling, I'd fix the seam then foil the whole
thing as, at least in my experience, foil doesn't match the plated
surface well enough to fool the eye when they're side-by-side
: The other way to deal with the seam would be to strip the chrome, fill,
: prime, and use Alclad Chrome over a black gloss acrylic base. The stuff is
: amazing.
:
And the Alclad sealer adds to the shiny factor. Pretty
impressive.
Bruce
I'd say it is okay for a show car- a rod or custom. A good aftermarket
chrome plating job can be VERY shiny. Not many shops do it these
days, but those who do can really put a shine on it- depends on
surface prep, of course. Not much chrome plated steel on NEW cars
these days, though.
While I can see the arguments behind "scale colors" I don't think that
shininess (reflectivity) has a scale. Think of car's chrome as a
distorted mirror. If you tried to model a plain flat mirror in scale
you wouldn't want to make it dull just because it's scaled down. If
you did that it would no longer properly reflect light and it would
not appear like a mirror. Same scenario applies to a chromed car
part. If you build a model of a 50's car and dull all of its chrome
parts, the model will look like a toy, not like a miniature replica of
the real car.
Peteski
I think the only chrome on my '87 Mustang other than the plating inside
the light buckets is around the blue oval in the slot on the front. I
can't call it a grille. Geez, I didn't even get a horsey up front.
Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.
I got one of those die-cast '79 LeBaron wagons recently and the chrome
on that model definitely does make it look toylike. I have no idea how
to tone it down to look 'real'.
Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.
I posted this query to Fine Scale Modeler a few years back as I agreed
that chrome on plastic toys/models is "out of scale" to the subject.
I believe one of their suggestions was to try a wash of smoke or some
kind of bluing to soften the edge of the finish. Never tried it
though..
Craig
Scale lustre (as good a name as I can come up with) is more-or-less a
subset of scale colour. Think about the basis of the scale colour
argument - how colours appear to tend towards grey with distance. By
the same argument, lustres tend towards satin, you lose the highlights
of close-up mirrors and the flatness of true matts. Certainly I would
never use full matt or full gloss at 1/72nd - just satin blends, tending
towards either extreme.
I'm taking about scale model cars rather than things like netural
metal airplanes for example. If you were to build two of the the same
very well detailed 1:25 scale model cars, one with full luster
"chrome" plating and another with scaled "luster" then took photos of
them in a realistic setting, the one with full luster "chrome" would
look more like a 1:1 car than the one with scale luster. At least that
is how I see this (from my own experience).
It is all about the reflections you see in the chrome (or in the
reflectance of the paint finish). If the reflections are clear then
the model looks realistic. If the reflections are soft or fuzzy (when
the "chrome" is not fully reflective) then the model looks like
model, not the scale representation of the rel subject).
Peteski
At 1/25th, scale effects on colour and lustre are small in any case, so
I wouldn't expect anything more than a subtle dimming of very smooth
chrome to be called for. Showroom finish means that extreme brightness
is to be expected as well.
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