I have just recently been able to get back into modeling after a few years off. I've been doing a lot of reading and decided I would drop my unanswered questions here.

1) Which type of glue is most widely used when building? Do you mainly use CA or model cement?

2) Airbrush: Which is better... Siphon-feed or Gravity-feed?

That's all for right now... I'm sure I will come up with more as time goes. Thanks in advance.

1. Liquid cement for styrene. CA for photo etch and other metals.
2. Gravity feed by a wide margin. Provides better control of atomization, allows much smaller paint usage, as little as a few drops and clean up is a breeze. I would recommend an Iwata HP-C Plus, HPB-Plus or a Tamiya HG Superfine.

For the Airbrushes, look very closely at the Tamiya ones - apparently they are made by the same company (B.Rich Co. Japan) that make the Iwata ones but they are MUCH cheaper.

Here's a nice review -

[url=http://www.missing-lynx.com/reviews/other/tamair/tamair.htm[/url]

Lee

http://www.missing-lynx.com/reviews/other/tamair/tamair.htm

I use Tamyia extra thin cement.. Havent used tube glue in quite some time..


Dave

Jeramie, within the next week there will either be 1large article or several small ones in the 'Start Here' forum The articles will cover the entire building of 2 1/72 fighters using many of the techniques that are fairly recent and some older ones too. Here is an extract with a pic -

Beginners guide to everything! (Well, a few things anyway) – Part 1

There are countless features/articles/tips on the Internet about how to build, paint and weather aircraft. Most of these articles are very good but they all tend to be specific about the particular point in question and often they seem aimed at the more experienced modellers. To this end I have decided to write this article that will hopefully bring all these tips together and will be aimed more at the beginner. For many readers there will be a lot of egg sucking to be had but you may find out something anyway. I will be covering –

· Choosing a kit
· Tools
· Building
· Adding further details (basic)
· Painting (including airbrushing)
· Applying decals
· Panel lines
· Dry brushing
· Exhausts stains
· Pre/Post shading
· Using Klear/Future
· Using Alclad
· Using Blu-tac
· Masking

It is not my intention to tell people how they should model, rather this is my way of doing it, is therefore neither right nor wrong – it just works for me.

Throughout the article I will indicate particularly important tips with a *Tip*

Choosing a kit

For people new too modelling of any sort, there are certain companies you will very quickly get to know, some for the right reasons and some for the wrong ones! Those that are coming into aircraft modelling from other genres will have heard of most of the companies and in general their quality of kits is fairly standard across all their genres.

For the beginner in aircraft modelling I would suggest that you start with 1:72 scale aircraft as they are usually a lot cheaper than 1:48 so should you totally mess one up there’s not a lot lost (time or money). I started out on the old Airfix 1:72 and most of them were poor in quality and even worse once I had ‘built’ them but it allowed me to quickly improve my skills. In this scale, Tamiya and Hasegawa (Often shortened to Tamigawa) are probably top of the tree with regards quality, detail and engineering. However, these tend to be very expensive by comparison to the others so it is well worth looking at the cheaper kits from the likes of Academy and Revell. Indeed, some of these kits are outstanding and the Revell ones in particular are very cheap at around £4 each for a P-51/Spitfire/Fw190 etc. For this article I am going to build the Academy P-51D and the Revell Bf109G-10. In most cases I will detail the build of the P-51D as the Bf109G-10 (and most aircraft) are similar to build. I will draw attention to the Bf109G-10 when a new technique is described such as using Blu-tac.




The above extract is not finalised but hopefully from the completed article you will gain some useful tips.

Regards,

Lee