Vario MD900 explorer

[heli4jim]

hi Steve,
you have a lot of birds from haunting . Your helicopter is looking good there
I see low level of orange peel in your blue paint looks good. I must buff out some of my orange peel to reduce it a little on my bird.
Jim

[satsuma]

Steve,don't think a small level of peel is a problem, looks real as the full size sure have some and more, most after some use are very rough around the edges.
All my paintjobs when over rivet and panel detail have a bit of peel somewhere as you really can't buff it out to well, the flat glass fuz ones with no details are easy to get a glass like finish.
Even the best painters in the world use polishing compounds to shine and get rid of holograms in the reflections in the clercoat.
Me, i'm happy if it looks ok from a couple of feet away

[helipainter]

This one came out to glossy and smooth








On g-rapd, i purposely did 2 coats of clear instead of three and let it shrink in, not put orange peel on the clear, like this

can see it on the right top in the flash reflection



but it carries the gloss fine. i like em both, but g-rapd looks more realistic in paint and scale modeling





Got a new windshield to drop in it, then there both going to scale masters for sale.

If i had to make a wild guess, i'd say i've probably sprayed 1,000's of gallons of clear, if not 10's of thousands. went 10 years, sprayed everyday, was all i did at a place that turned over millions in revenue a year worth of custom paint. never sprayed many cars, never did auto body/auto paint

After painting these models the last 2 years straight, i've come to realize when i gloss out a heli, it photographs like crap in the sky because of so much reflection as well as the brightness of the color get's washed out by the glare, when they shrink in like i did grapd, they really hold there color at a distance, like night and day

this is a good example



see the glare the smoother blue and silver one makes


The easier way than buffing is color sand and reclear. everything but the g-rapd have more than one clear coat on em. problem is you'll loose all the rivet glare cause they won't be raised anymore, they get burried in the clear. That was my draw to the glue in rivets, so could still get the texture even after making it look like a harley fender

[satsuma]

Thats what i was meaning, i like the finish like the G-RAPD, thats how i like my scale models painted , think a very realistic finish indeed.

[helipainter]

It takes patience and experience to find the right combo that makes them stand out as looking realistic.What looks cool at the car show is a different deal than what looks good at SEMA vs what looks realistic when you start talking miniaturizing something, the attempt to miniaturize the paint finish is a difficult task since there all atomized paint droplets on a microscopic level flowing together to make what we know as orange peel. Air pressure, fluid flow, thickness of the material all have a huge influence. If you want the paint to shrink in, over reduce it, just be careful with runs..... even just adding a little more reducer on the final coat is enough to piss it off and get it to suck in a little.


G-RAPD looks red past 200 yards, G-JIVE looks like a glare with a rotor at 100 yards, no blue is noticeable, but the glare is

[FlyawayClyde]

Originally Posted by helipainter

Gives me a reason to paint and make money than dick with a heli i'll kill if i try to bust my ass to make the show, just got that sinking feeling. There is always next year

I'll tell you, that sounds like very prudent advice from your self

[Lee Taylor]

Just saw this topic...nice build. Is it flying these days?