This page is devoted to things we know on how to make your modelling easier.  It was inspired by our own Peter Eccles who, in his own words, "works very hard at being lazy".  A key part of the openess and friendliness and indeed success of our modellers is, we believe, our willingness to discuss and impart how we do things.  If you have a challenge we can usually come up with three or more solutions for you to try!

Shiny Thing

Pete Eccles B-17 with his own natural metal technique applied (ScaleModelWorld 2013)

Most of us in 580 Modellers love Gunze Sanyo paints, which are sold over here in the UK by MDC (see links) as the pigments are very fine and they spray beautifully.  Within the range is a fantastic range of metal finishes which until now only those with an airbrush can benefit from.  However, Peter Eccles has found a way of applying these by brush and getting a simply marvellous effect, which he has perfected recently as evidenced by his beautifully, shiny, B-17.  The video below gives a quick demonstration but basically he shakes the paint in the jar, opens it up and runs his ladies make-up brush (!) around the inside of the lid.  He then scrapes any excess off across the rim of the jar until the brush has very little paint on it and is ready to go.  As this is essentially dry brushing the brush can be carried aound in a bag which is exactly what he did for the demonstration video - he didn't bring the paint jar with him, just the prepared brush.  The plastic surface needs to be as shiny and smooth as is possible (a bit like preparing for Alclad preparation!) and as you can see the brush is applied direct to the plastic and can be buffed up with a finger or a cloth to give different finishes.  Simply marvellous!

A demonstration of the application technique (and apologies for the sound as it ain't brilliant)