Finished broke out piece

[Raider L]

I let the glued in piece dry for an extra day. Yesterday I went out there and pushed my thumb nail into the glue and it was still a little soft so I knew to let it dry for another day. So today I went out to the truck and the glue was hard so I went ahead and sanded it down flush with the instrument panel part the piece is glued to. Then I got my model airplane paint out I always use to do touch ups and painted it. I was going to just paint the line where it was glued but then decided to paint the whole thing just so it would be uniform across the whole piece. Besides the model airplane paint is thick and would fill in some of the messy looking surface of the piece. That worked out fine and now here's the result.

 

[Raider L]

Pics.

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The above pic is after the piece was sanded. There was a couple of bumps on the turned down front of the piece. Now it looks and feels much straighter. It's a little low right at the place where it meets up with the lower trim piece but there's nothing I could do about that. Otherwise I would have had to heat it up again at the bottom and try to push it out so it would be straighter. But this is the best as it gets, guys.

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This is Testers model airplane paint in the Masters grade that is a very good enamel paint. This is flat black. I've been using Testers model airplane paint since I was nine years old, okay. There for awhile I tried Pectra but found it wasn't as good as the Testers. The Pectra dried out in the bottle to fast and you couldn't rejuvinate it as well. The Testers can be rejuvinated with either some mineral spirits or paint thinner.

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Fake picture of me painting the piece. I had already painted it. I didn't want to stop painting, take a picture, then start back painting again.

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So this is after it was dried, but I went on an errand so more air could get on it, and then took the picture above of it. So I guess it's about as dried as it's going to get. I haven't put the other screws in the lower trim piece but I still have the gear indicator light I made to adjust and fix in place. That's what led me to go ahead and make this piece because light was coming from the hole of the broke out panel. So I had to fix that before I finished adjusting the light. Otherwise I would not know if the light was okay if there was still light coming from this hole. Once I push that rubber seal down then I'll know if the light is okay.

So if anyone wants to make a comment on my work and the piece in general, please feel free to comment, make suggestions on how I could have done this easier, better, or not at all, or whatever. Have at it!

 

[Goldie Driver]

I am pretty impressed. Buying a bezel in theory would have been the easiest route but with your aftermarket gauges probably not.

For using materials you had available and your plastic molding skills-
Well played, Sir!

 

[Raider L]

@Goldie Driver,

Thank you. I just wish I could have found a different color black. I'll have to go back over to Hobby Lobby and see if they have another black. I didn't even know there were different blacks until recently. I figured black was black. No it isn't, especially in car colors. I must be blind then because I can't see the difference. Maybe out in the sun it might be but in the store black looks black to me. For you married guys out there, hasn't your wife ever came up to you and asked you, "Is this Navy or Black?" Really?

 

[Goldie Driver]

Oh, BTW- I always preferred Pactra to Testors. Testors was so thin some colors took multiple coats.

But the cats meow was Humbrol. They claimed that it dried with no brush strokes - they was right !

After I got a hobby air brush with a spare tire adapter as the air source- kick ass idea if you dont have a real compressor- brush strokes became less of a problem.

 

[Raider L]

@Goldie Driver,

I absolutely loved Humbrol paints!!! A professional modeler turned me onto Humbrol and at that time we had a superior model shop that sold all of the colors. I hand painted a WWII German bomber that was used up in Norway that was a huge skiplane bomber. I don't remember the aircraft model number but I did the camo paint scheme in white and entered it in a model competition at our local Air Force base open house and won an award. I would have never thought I would have won anything for building a model airplane but sure enough it happened. The award was my model was picked for public display at the show with a half dozen other model planes on display, out of I don't know how many, a lot.

And yes, you can apply it and it leaves no brush strokes. My modeling friend used air exclusively, he was so good that he made his own stencils to paint the U.S. star emblem on the sides of the fuselage and wings. He taught me more than I ever knew about model building, but a little late because that was before I got married and I stopped building models after that. He could hand paint the tick marks on the instruments. There was no way I could do that, my hands are made to swing sledge hammers, not paint tick mars that are so small you can't hardly see them. He used those magnifying glasses to do it, but even with them I still couldn't do that, lol. If he bought a kit that wasn't made so good as most of the American models were, big rivets everywhere, the Japanese made the best, no rivets, but he wanted that particular aircraft he'd sand all the rivets down on the whole model. He said if they were scale they'd be three inches in diameter, lol!
But it was a lot of fun and still have a lot of model planes and cars left. I've got them all boxed up good and stored in the attic. I have some that were bought back in the '70's. I don't even remember what I have anymore.