Varnishing and painting Riva Aquarama

[JeremyParticipant @jeremy15845]

Thanks, Martin. It is the wooden kit, planked first in lime and then in Mahogany. I agree your comments on the windscreen. I made a real mess of it. You may notice that I have left out the padding round the cockpit. One of the "improvements" in the revised version of the kit was to replace all padded leather parts by PVC mouldings. Just about OK for the seats and rear deck but the padding looked horrible. Overall, I can only think that the "improvements" were made to reduce cost rather than to enhance the model.

Cheers, Jeremy

[Martin Field 1Participant @martinfield1]

Jeremy,

I used 60 thou. styrene sheeting, suitably carved with creases and slight folds. for the seats themselves I used layers of Ureol modelling board to represent pleats and individually stuffed seat sections. More carved creases, then matt paint, buffed with a very clean pinky (little finger is the cleanest as it does the least). This looks more like leather/Naugahide/Vinyl than the real thing ever does.

What did Amati come up with for the Rattan in the cocktail cabinet drop downs? (I dread to think<G&gt

Cheers,

Martin

[JeremyParticipant @jeremy15845]

Martin

Etched bras sheet – actually it doesn't look to bad. I still thinks it's the padding/cushioning round the cockpit that really lets them down – as well as the replacement of the steel rubbing strip by a white plastic extrusion which they encourage you to paint chrome. I used their strip but covered it with an American product "Bare Metal" which looks pretty much like chrome.

Cheers, Jeremy

[Martin Field 1Participant @martinfield1]

Ah, good old Bare Metal Foil, beloved of slot car racers everywhere. Very thin, but fragile. Roasting foil is so much easier to use. BMF also prefers a painted surface to stick. On bare resin it doesn't stick well.

I used 2 layers of net curtain stretched over a frame, for rattan, which I then flood sprayed with self etch primer because it's the right colour and sticks it all together very quickly. I then just scissored it to shape and dropped it in the previously made and rebated pearwood frames.

There's no such thing as paint "chrome". Paint is paint, metal is metal. There were 150 separate pieces of brass on my Rivas which had to be polished and nickel plated!

Cheers,

Martin

[mark69Participant @mark69]

Hi Martin I beg to differ on the paint ! I've been making airfix kits for years I've an old quality Street tin full of airfix and humbrol paints ,Ive an old tin of humbrol "chrome metal coat" it realy is chrome not just silver and no it's not metallic !!!…….mark

[JeremyParticipant @jeremy15845]

Mark, does it really shine like chrome or does it still look more like metallic paintwork on a car? If you really get a mirror-like chrome finish, that would be remarkable. Jeremy

[Martin Field 1Participant @martinfield1]

Well, of course if it's any good at all it IS metallic, intensely metallic, but it's still paint and will always look like paint. Especially the junk that the Humber Oil Company have always produced. Ye Gods I hate their muck, always have. I couldn't wait to replace it and did so a few years later with the wonderful Floquil, a paint so finely and densely pigmented it was almost impossible to fail, but their silver was still paint.

Unfortunately even if you get a mate in the States to send it to you because the pansy post office won't, Floquil has changed its formula from Xylene based to some other garbage that renders it useless. Testors was good when you could get it, but the importers, who are a steady toodle from my house, no longer bring it in. I now use John Keep's signwriting enamels when I need paint. I bought a job lot for 3 quid at a Sunday Market! Fortunately I need paint only rarely. The beauty of being a patternmaker is you use one primer and that's it.

But come on, Mark, Humbrol? "chrome" paint?….perlease!!<G>

Martin

[Martin Field 1Participant @martinfield1]

Posted by Jeremy on 25/04/2016 18:54:54:

Mark, does it really shine like chrome or does it still look more like metallic paintwork on a car? If you really get a mirror-like chrome finish, that would be remarkable. Jeremy

Haha, well said, Jeremy. No of course it doesn't shine like chrome. In fact, on a model under, say, 1/8th scale, chrome looks terribly coarse. Nickel looks better. I have even used silver plating or, when really up against it, bright zinc. If you can't get the plating done, and it's not always easy to find a plater these days, polished aluminium will be a good substitute, especially if you burnish it, before polishing it.

Paint is for colour ONLY. Metal needs metal to look right. If you can't work metal to do it, take up golf!

Martin

[mark69Participant @mark69]

Hi No I did say it wasn't matalic I do know the difference !! Maybe I will post a pick to prove you both wrong and yes it it bright not a steel silver at all…. mark

[Martin Field 1Participant @martinfield1]

Mark,

if it purports to be a "chrome" finish it HAS to be intensely metallic in order to suggest that it is as silver as it can be! Of course it's metallic. How else would it be "silver" or "chrome"?? Same with brass, "gold" or bronze paint. Same with rub'n'buff type finishes. Very finely divided metal powder in either the paint's carrier or wax. I've seen the much vaunted Alclad and that is very good, but it's still obviously paint.

Working metals is very easy. If you have a model which includes unpainted metal parts, you really need to pick it up as a skill, not put up with paint.

(By "you", I guess I really mean "one", as it's not a personal attack).

Cheers,

Martin

[Martin Field 1Participant @martinfield1]

You can't tell me all the nickel plated brass and nickel silver parts on this model could have survived paint!

The rings in which the glasses sit in the cocktail cabinet are nickel plated brass as are the working nickel silver hinges on the same cabinet flaps, copies of an actual hinge I found in the bilge of a damaged Riva Aquarama. I still have it. The badge on the black velvet is finely photo-etched brass. It actually COULDN'T be painted as it would have been too fine. Parts of it are only a few thou. thick.

Martin

[Martin Field 1Participant @martinfield1]

On each cam cover of the 4 Packards is a tiny nickel plated badge. That could never have been painted convincingly. It had to shine like a jewel on the dense black gloss of the aero engines. Silver paint WAS used as a contrast on the superchargers and carbs. because they were a dull cast finish.

Well, that's my contribution and I think I've proved my point.

Martin

[mark69Participant @mark69]

Chrome Nuff said !!

[Martin Field 1Participant @martinfield1]

Looks like mill finish aluminium to me, if it's the prop blade I'm supposed to be looking at. Chrome it ain't! Unless you wanted the look of chrome on fine sandpaper<G>

I think the mods. are probably getting tired of us now, so that's my last on the subject to save them the task.

Martin

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