58059 Porsche 959 original body building / painting project

[Truck Norris 2237]

No, the stripes will be the stickers. That's the plan but I'm aware they don't go on very well, we'll see!

I paused on this while I finished the Evo V, then I've been on Holiday, then busy last weekend and this so today was the first time in a while I'd had for RC stuff. Spent a couple more hours on masking:

I still need to do the top bit of the window. I'll draw and cut a mask with the cutting machine for those:

Straight bits of tape and corners cut with the machine:

For the curve around the rear side windows I cut two thin curved strips for the edge then used tape:

One of my holiday snaps:

[dc-arena 81]

Wow, stunning!!

Will be following this closely, can't wait to see how it turns out

[Truck Norris 2237]

Masks for the top section of the side windows done:

It took some trial and error to get these right. Rather than cut them from the Tamiya masking sheet, I used some cheap green vinyl for the test cuts:

I then masked off the rest of the body:

I'm using cling film and tamiya masking sheet. As with all the older bodies there's no overspray film so the outside needs covering too. The masking sheet has tape on the edge so is quicker, but the cling film is more transparent to keep an eye on how the paint is going on.

I taped over the bits to be painted silver. I'll spray the black then peel off the tape for the silver, covering up the black bits. Not strictly necessary as it won't show through the black, but it could bleed through the edges of the tape. As the paint won't be completely dry I'll use the clear masking sheet rather than stick tape on the fresh paint.

It was good painting weather today so I was able to carry on and get the black and silver done:

I was super careful not to go too heavy with the coats. A few bits need a slight touch up but it came out well.

The round edge masks I cut worked a treat:

[mman2005 443]

Cling film!!!!!! Wish I had thought of/heard that sooner. Great idea. Will use this going forward!

[Kevin_Mc 411]

Looking good so far

[Grotty Otty 868]

Clingfilm?! *doffs cap...  Genius. I've got to smoke a rear window on an Impreza shell as I messed up the sticker alignment on and have been putting it off because of all the masking I'd have to do! Can't wait to see this finished. 

[Truck Norris 2237]

Today I started masking for the blue. To ensure the transition between the blue and white is in the right place, I cut masking tape the shape of the stripes and fitted them in place. This also gives me a bit of practice as to where the stickers will sit. I've seen people stick the stripes on before painting, but I don't want to risk getting overspray on them, or damaging them as I handle the body.

I also created masks for the front indicators and rear lights. I'll brush painted these with decanted PS when I've sprayed the blue.

The headlights I'll mask later when I do the white.

[dc-arena 81]

Do you use a hobby knife etc to cut the masking tape into shape once you applied it to the body? It’s incredibly neat!

[Truck Norris 2237]

1 hour ago, dc-arena said:

Do you use a hobby knife etc to cut the masking tape into shape once you applied it to the body? It’s incredibly neat!

No, tends to scratch the body which means if you mis-cut and need to redo it you're left with a visible scratch. I use a cutting machine to make the masks:

Draw the shapes in Adobe Illustrator then the machine works like a printer but has a blade rather than ink heads. Makes it possible to do complex shapes and perfect circles etc. Great for repeat work as you can just cut multiples of the same shape. For example I've done four 911 GT2s so each time I can just run off the same sheet and cut out all the window and light masks in seconds.

[TwistedxSlayer 1290]

8 hours ago, Truck Norris said:

No, tends to scratch the body which means if you mis-cut and need to redo it you're left with a visible scratch. I use a cutting machine to make the masks:

Draw the shapes in Adobe Illustrator then the machine works like a printer but has a blade rather than ink heads. Makes it possible to do complex shapes and perfect circles etc. Great for repeat work as you can just cut multiples of the same shape. For example I've done four 911 GT2s so each time I can just run off the same sheet and cut out all the window and light masks in seconds.

Thats pure dedication to the hobby. Im very impressed with your work.

[Ann3x 220]

18 hours ago, Truck Norris said:

No, tends to scratch the body which means if you mis-cut and need to redo it you're left with a visible scratch. I use a cutting machine to make the masks:

Draw the shapes in Adobe Illustrator then the machine works like a printer but has a blade rather than ink heads. Makes it possible to do complex shapes and perfect circles etc. Great for repeat work as you can just cut multiples of the same shape. For example I've done four 911 GT2s so each time I can just run off the same sheet and cut out all the window and light masks in seconds.

You should sell the masks. People would pay for these I think & you've already done the hard work if you have the files saved.

Back to the stripes, painted looks MUCH better imo. I've painted 3 of these with stripes - really isnt too hard to do with some fine tape & planning and looks much more professional. 

[Truck Norris 2237]

I may be wrong, but I'm not sure there's enough people building these to create a market for the masks. The TBG one isn't dimensionally the same (a bit smaller I believe).

Last Sunday I finished masking for the blue:

I've used three types of tape for this. The white is Tamiya Masking Tape For Curves, 2mm and 5mm. This is flexible and gives a sharper edge than the normal yellow tape, but you need to be careful sticking it down as it's not as sticky. The yellow is normal Tamiya tape in the grey dispensers, 6mm, 10mm and 18mm and the blue is 3M which is cheap so great for the larger areas. I'll sometimes use the 40mm Tamiya yellow depending how much I have left.

Much like the equally detailed King Cab, this is a pain to get the tape into the curves and recesses. The white to blue transition under the intercooler at the back is particularly tricky. Most of these I've seen have some bleeding or untidiness there.

The weather was decent so I was able to paint it too:

It's impossible to get the spray into the tight corners without the risk of saturating the tape, so I decanted some PS-4 and brush painted where the paint was too light. I also did the little roof light domes.

Yesterday, more masking! This time for the white.

Rather than make masks for the windows, it's quicker to just do them with tape. Unlike something like the 911 GT2 where I'll do a few of them I don't intend to go through all this again. Once is enough!

The side windows are easy as the black frames means only the bottom edge needs to be exact with the mask. The windscreen is the same - the trim is painted on the outside so the mask doesn't need to be too precise as painting the trim will cover the transition.

[Ann3x 220]

6 minutes ago, Truck Norris said:

I may be wrong, but I'm not sure there's enough people building these to create a market for the masks. The TBG one isn't dimensionally the same (a bit smaller I believe).

You're right if you want to make a profit it clearly isnt a goer :). My point was more about preservation of the limited remaining stock.

I painted one of these original shells a couple of months ago, my masking was ok but much more amateurly done than yours and it took a LONG time. I would quite happily have paid to improve the job i did, purely to do proper justice to the shell.

[Truck Norris 2237]

I forgot to mention that yesterday I also painted the front indicators orange, and the rear tail lights orange and red. The fronts are all orange so simple enough but the rears are spilt with orange, white and red sections. Rather than mask and spray such a small area I brush painted them. I'd previously discovered that the with the Tamiya Masking Tape For Curves it's possible to brush paint over this with no bleed, providing the tape is stuck well and the paint it's too runny. the 5mm tape was the perfect size for the white section that separates the orange and red.

Having no PC paint in the correct colours decanted PS orange and red. When doing this you need to wait for the paint to thicken as it's too thin immediately after decanting. It dries fast too so there's a small window where it's usable. 

I forgot to take pics at this point but you can just about see the lights in the previous post. Better pics further down.

With the lights done I sprayed the white:

You can see here how fragile the body is, especially at the corners. It's literally paper thin in places. There's a bit of bleeding here that I didn't spot before, but it's not too bad. Close up photos are never flattering.

Normally I spray thick coats of white, then immediately continue with silver and then white again or black. I plan to back the paint with this, but I stopped as soon as the white was thick enough. I test with a coloured piece of paper pressed to the body inside behind the paint - if I can't see it through the body then it's ok to back.

I didn't back with silver straight away for a couple of reasons - I wanted to examine the body closely without the masking and clingfilm to make sure the coverage of white was ok, and I also wanted to remove the headlight masks before the paint got too thick. Normally I use so much paint I have to cut around them. This is never super neat, but I normally have vinyl trims around the lights to cover the edges. There's no trims on this so I removed them and will re-mask with a 1mm larger mask to preserve this edge.

I'll back the inside at a later date as I want to paint the windscreen trim first so I can more accurately mask the windscreen. 

Today I masked for the windscreen trim. As per the manual I will paint on the outside, but rather than the specified PC-5 and X-2 mix I will use PS-55 Flat Clear as a primer, then TS-29 Semi Gloss Black. Tamiya expect you to brush paint all the details which would be impossible for almost anyone to do neatly! 

Rather than cut curves from masking sheet with the machine, I found the Tamiya Curves tape was able to get a tight enough radius.

This is the first of many moments like this as I paint all the external bits. Will it have worked or will I need to clean it all off and start again?

Yep, that worked!

(note untidy blue roof dome lights - watch this space!)

If you're making a flip book of the body from this angle here's the next page:

Gap at the base of the windscreen, good job I held off backing the white. I've now touched this up:

I still had some time left and the weather was good so I continued. Rather than mask all the black bits I just did what I'd have time to, allowing for painting time too.

Front grilles. It looks like wonky tape, but there's straight tape underneath. I really like this Masking Tape For Curves. I bought it years ago but the first time I used it I got major bleeds so it sat in a draw for years.

Roof dome lights. I cut two squares with a 7mm hole in the middle to mask a perfect circle:

Another for the flip book:

Grilles done:

Domes done. Didn't quite reach the edge so I'll redo these when I paint the next bit:

Coming along nicely but still loads to do - the black vents on the rear arches, the circular vents on the back panel, the trims around the front and rear lights. recesses in the front bumper, also the red parts of the rear facing roof lights, backing the white and blue, doing the front lower bumper in white and then all the stickers. Definitely the most challenging and time consuming body I've done yet!

[Country Mike 120]

E p i c 

[Fuijo 880]

I can't help but admire your Zen-like patience.

I also can't help but picture the horrible mess I would have made of this if I'd been able to get my hands on one in the 80's. Yuk!

 

[dc-arena 81]

On 9/16/2018 at 9:25 AM, Truck Norris said:

 

It's impossible to get the spray into the tight corners without the risk of saturating the tape, so I decanted some PS-4 and brush painted where the paint was too light. I also did the little roof light domes.

 

Stunning job!

I've a question, and it may be really dumb but here goes.. How do you go about decanting some of the rattle can paint? Do you literally spray it into a pot or something? I need to touch up some tiny bits of body I missed on my TT02 body.

 

 

[Truck Norris 2237]

3 hours ago, dc-arena said:

Stunning job!

I've a question, and it may be really dumb but here goes.. How do you go about decanting some of the rattle can paint? Do you literally spray it into a pot or something? I need to touch up some tiny bits of body I missed on my TT02 body.

 

 

Yep, spray into a pot or the lid of the paint can from about 4 inches away. It goes everywhere though, so do it on a sheet of newspaper and wear gloves or put your hands in plastic bags. Also wrap paper or plastic around the paint can to stop it getting plastered.

You need to do it close to capture all the paint as the spray pattern of the nozzle is quite wide.

The paint is very thin when first decanted, the lighter colours are thinner than others, so you need to wait for it to thicken or it' like trying to paint with watercolours.

[NWarty 1325]

Absolutely gorgeous TN! 

[dc-arena 81]

On 9/18/2018 at 8:01 PM, Truck Norris said:

Yep, spray into a pot or the lid of the paint can from about 4 inches away. It goes everywhere though, so do it on a sheet of newspaper and wear gloves or put your hands in plastic bags. Also wrap paper or plastic around the paint can to stop it getting plastered.

You need to do it close to capture all the paint as the spray pattern of the nozzle is quite wide.

The paint is very thin when first decanted, the lighter colours are thinner than others, so you need to wait for it to thicken or it' like trying to paint with watercolours.

 

Thanks. The colour is Red that I want to touch up. How long would you recommend waiting for it to thicken? And, should I try and stir the paint to thicken it, or just leave it?

[Truck Norris 2237]

Today I masked off the front lower bumper guard. The manual states to paint this on the outside a mixture of PC-1 white and PC-6 yellow. As mentioned, the PC paints are long since discontinued so I'm having to determine suitable modern replacements. I've seen people paint this completely white or completely yellow. In the official Tamiya shots it looks closer to white. I think the creamy TS-7 Racing White would be a good match so I'll start with PS-1 white then a final layer of TS-7 when the coverage is good.

The manual states "Add about 30% of Tamiya Acrylic Paint Flat Base (X-21) to Tamiya Polycarbonate Paints (PC) when painting body on outside" but it's not clear whether this is just for the black sections (where it's explicitly stated as "PC5 + X21") or the bumper guard too. To prevent bleeds I'll keep the TS can at a distance which should give it a slight textured semi-gloss appearance.

After doing this I decided I wanted to paint the backing layers on the inside so more total coverage masking:

This takes ages going round the edges and the curves of the wheel arches, but this should be the last time I need to do it.

I sprayed a few layers of PS silver then finished with PS black to make it totally opaque:

You can just about see white bits along the bottom of the windows and around the headlights. I mentioned before that when re-masking I was going to leave a gap to preserve the sharp white edge. The light buckets will bridge the gap at the front. I'll carefully brush around the window edges.

I plan to paint the white plastic wing retention plates black too, so the body is super neat from the inside. The interior tray is already black on the underside.

 

On 9/19/2018 at 10:01 PM, dc-arena said:

 

Thanks. The colour is Red that I want to touch up. How long would you recommend waiting for it to thicken? And, should I try and stir the paint to thicken it, or just leave it?

You'll need to experiment, you only need a small amount for touch ups, so stirring will just spread it around and coat your container reducing how much you have to actually paint with.

[Yalson 514]

Every time you show a picture showing a completed stage, I feel like standing up and applauding. This is a beautiful job.

One does wonder exactly who Tamiya were expecting to go to all of this trouble, though. Given that these would mostly have been bought by hamfisted teenagers, how many of them would have been completed to any standard beyond a simple one-colour paintjob, let alone the exacting standards it seemingly requires to get the thing anywhere near accurate.

And don't even get me started on the fact that the body has a lip which folds back in on itself at the front. Reminds me of the moulded endplates on the Kyosho Mid wing. *Shudders.*

[Truck Norris 2237]

Midweek I painted the front guard, but I changed plans to what paint I was going to use. It would need to be quite thick to cover the blue properly and I was conscious that when you paint thick it can cause problems removing the masking tape unless you cut the edge with a knife. This is a tricky shape to cut so instead of PS-1 I used PS flat clear as a base (like I've done with the black sections) and then the new TS-101 Base White, which described by Tamiya:

★ This shade of white was developed for the purpose of undercoating darker plastics and enabling superior topcoat tones.
★ Requires minimal coats to achieve full coverage.

Just what I need. It has a semi-gloss appearance too, which is what you'd get from using PC on the outside.

The result:

Next, masking to redo the roof domes and for the black trim around the lights. The manual doesn't direct you to do this, but Tamiya's photos show it.

At the same time I masked off for the round vents on the rear panel:

I still need to do the vents on the sides of the rear arches and the front bumper recesses, but I'm not keen on spending hours and hours in one go masking. I prefer to do it in stages, even though it may take longer in the end.

Roof domes redone, unflattering close-up shows a rougher edge than is visible to the naked eye:

Light trims painted front. The effect is quite subtle as the black is in the recess:

Rears. This tidies up the slight bleeds I got when painting the orange and red:

I masked off the roof lights to paint the lenses red:

Then sprayed them TS-8 Italian Red:

Like everything on this car - fiddly, difficult and time consuming!

 

On 9/24/2018 at 12:36 AM, Yalson said:

Every time you show a picture showing a completed stage, I feel like standing up and applauding. This is a beautiful job.

One does wonder exactly who Tamiya were expecting to go to all of this trouble, though.

Thanks for the kind words  Yes, there are things you need to do that are seemingly impossible. For example the black sections on the window - with access to a computer, a vinyl cutter and experience with the software I was able to make my own masks. It still took a few hours of trial and error. No idea how they expected someone do do it in 1986 though! Or mask perfect ovals for the headlights, or paint perfect circular black trims on the roof dome lights (again, simple enough when you can just computer cut exact masks).

 

[TurnipJF 9183]

8 hours ago, Truck Norris said:

Like everything on this car - fiddly, difficult and time consuming!

And like everything on this car, done to a fantastic standard by a true master. Very impressive!!

[Truck Norris 2237]

I'd forgotten to post these pics, but here's how I did the mirrors. After painting them TS-29 Semi Gloss Black I scanned them to get the shape, then  made a shape to mask for the silver. Left and right are not the same shape, presumably because the moulds were produced pre CAD.

White Tack for the edges:

Then the silver painted TS-30 Silver Leaf:

Today I tackled the last paint steps. This requires the recesses of the vents on the front and rear bumpers painting black. Masking for recesses is tricky so here's how I did it.

2mm Masking Tape For Curves around the edge, but instead of trying to fold it over, which would cause it to come unstuck, I ran a bead of White Tack around to hold it in place then taped over the tack. There's tape under the tack too, just to be sure.

I did the same at the front (I trimmed the bit sticking up after taking the pic)

Back to this familiar look again:

Spraying this I was mindful to make passes at the correct angles to get the paint into all the corners, holding the can at a distance and doing light coats to avoid saturating the tape.

My favourite part is peeling off the tape and seeing the result. In this case it was absolutely perfect:

Paint on the flat area of the recess and none on the walls. 

That's all the painting done. What a mission!