When you find a small scratch, you may want to repair it with your own hands (D.I.Y.) by rubbing or polishing it. You can brush in the scratches, or you can cover them with spray paint. However, with a little care and attention to detail, you can sometimes get a surprisingly clean finish, and even better than you had imagined. Preparation and set up before painting is extremely important, but so is dust removal during the painting process and dust removal after painting. There are a variety of tools that can be used for this process.
There are various types of cutter knives!
While painting, novice painters often get caught up in the spray of the paint, but the professionals say that what you should be looking at is the condition of the paint film. For example, if you see lint-like debris on the surface of the paint, be sure to remove it as soon as you notice it and never paint over it. The cleaning needle used in carburetor maintenance can be used to remove such debris. In addition, there are not only cutter knives that can be folded and reused when they are no longer sharp, but also design knives that can be used in various situations and shapes. It is easy to use just by having several kinds.
Here's another useful tweezer and hair puller
If you notice during the painting process, you can quickly remove small debris with a design knife or the tip of a needle, but if the paint is in the middle of hardening, for example, it is not easy to remove. In such cases during the hardening process, it is often possible to effectively remove debris by using a hair puller or tweezers. In order to concentrate on the fingertips and the tip of the tool, it is best to work with your elbows on a workbench or the like and fix them so that they do not shake.
A cloth for wiping before painting
Just before painting work, it is often wiped off the surface of painted parts with wax off or thinner for surface degreasing, but it is unexpectedly common that fluff of a rag is left on the painted surface to be painted. In such a case, you can pick up the fluff by wiping it off with a product called "Tack Cloth" to beautify the paint finish surface and eliminate the dust.
High-quality finish with an airbrush
If it's just repairing the scratches on the black frame, I'm sure you can make it look good. There are many Sunday mechanics who think that it is a good idea to take the plunge and try an airbrush. Paint professionals often use compressed air from a small compressor to squeeze out the air, and there is no need for a large compressor like using an impact wrench.
The airbrush set for models from Tamiya is a must-have for the finest finishing of plastic models. Of course, it is possible to paint beautifully by masking and also to finish the borderline with blur. Compared with the painting of the model, the frame repair painting of the motorcycle can be said to be easy at all.
- Point 1: If you aim at a good finish even a little, the result will surely follow.
- Point 2: Let's pay attention to the prearrangement and the finish after painting rather than painting itself!
- Point 3: Once you use an airbrush, you can definitely fantasize about using it for various purposes.
Whether you're in the middle of setting up, working on or finishing up, there are tools that would definitely come in handy if you have them, and make finishing up easier. Tools that can recover from failures also depend on how you use them and your ideas, so even if you don't have them or own them, you should know that such tools exist. Let's take a look at some tools that are definitely useful to have, even for those post-painting troubles.
For example, when there is a deep scratch, it is possible to hide the scratch by raising the paint coating. However, in the case of scratches that are somewhat deep, it is better to make good use of lacquer putty. After filling the flaw with putty, it is best to grind up the putty surface to eliminate any bumps and then touch up or repair the flaw with paint. There are various types of lacquer putty, and you can aim for a better finish by knowing its characteristics. Spot putty with aluminum powder, which we used this time, has higher hardness after curing than general lacquer putty, and can create a more stable base.
If it is difficult to hide scratches even with such aluminum powder-containing putty, it would be better to peel off the paint from the scratched area and use a two-component poly putty mixed with a hardener. Such a setup will give you a more stable base coat.
On the other hand, if the scratches are only slightly deeper than the hairline, the basic type of putty used for models can also fill the scratches sufficiently. Poly putty that uses hardener takes time to dry and harden, but lacquer putty for hiding small scratches is easy to use because the hardening time is relatively short, whether it is a product containing aluminum powder or for models.
The portraits of singers, artists, and demon masks painted on the rear gate of large trucks are artworks created by using paint guns with various nozzle diameters, although they are less common these days. Airbrushes are used for such works of art. The airbrush is the only technique that can be used to finish the details and adjust the shade of makeup on the portrait.
Since the airbrush paint is thinned with thinner, it is difficult to work with the brush. The paint is so thin that as soon as you put the brush into the area to be repaired, it will drip down. The greatest feature of the airbrush is that it is relatively easy to spray even such a soft paint. In other words, even if the paint contains a lot of thinner and thinner pigment, it is easy to paint in and blur by applying layers of paint.
One of the main features of using an airbrush is that the "repair paint" that makes use of such features can provide a higher quality finish than imagined. Since this is a small-scale painting, it is unlikely to cause inconvenience to your family or neighbors. We hope you will give it a try and aim for a high-quality finish.
