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Putty body kits, how?

Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2006 5:20 am
by Juzi's Customz
Are there any tutorials out there? Im buying som putty and i wanna put a body kit on my Mazda RX7. How do you guys style it n shit? with small files? Anyways, thanks for any help! I did search! :-)

Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2006 6:10 am
by betty.k

Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2006 6:17 am
by Juzi's Customz
No, i mean like new bumpers/lips and side skirts etc.

Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2006 1:12 pm
by ynad
shape with use of your fingers, sand with use of sand paper.
mostly all done with use of the brain :-)

Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2006 1:22 pm
by SuperFly
Personally, I use pieces of styrene for as much as possible, and use putty to smooth things out and fill the cracks. Doing body work is tough. I don't mean this as an insult, but you might just try laying down a few nice paint jobs before you jump into body kits. You'll get good practice just getting rid of the mold lines and defects present in most shells. Try something simple with putty at first, like removing the wing and filling in the wingholes.

As far as shaping it goes, the one thing that I think is worth mentioning if you haven't done it before is how fast you have to work initially. Modelling putty that you can sand and paint will loose it's maleability and start to harden within minutes, so it's not like you are sitting there with a piece of Play-doh just sculpting till you like it. You lay down enough to build up what you want to do, let it dry, then shape it back with sandpaper.

Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2006 5:34 pm
by sessiz
That's fuckin wisdom, good ass wisdom from superfly. Follow it and you shall achieve what you want. :-)
In addition and for clarity any piece of stiff plastic, like from packaging (tool packaging, toy packaging etc) can be used for initial shaping. (instead of Styrene)

Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2006 12:22 pm
by steelwoolghandi
SuperFly wrote:Personally, I use pieces of styrene for as much as possible, and use putty to smooth things out and fill the cracks. Doing body work is tough. I don't mean this as an insult, but you might just try laying down a few nice paint jobs before you jump into body kits. You'll get good practice just getting rid of the mold lines and defects present in most shells. Try something simple with putty at first, like removing the wing and filling in the wingholes.

As far as shaping it goes, the one thing that I think is worth mentioning if you haven't done it before is how fast you have to work initially. Modelling putty that you can sand and paint will loose it's maleability and start to harden within minutes, so it's not like you are sitting there with a piece of Play-doh just sculpting till you like it. You lay down enough to build up what you want to do, let it dry, then shape it back with sandpaper.
SuperFly hit it dead on. The only thing I would add is that styrene and putty is for more experienced builders its better to paint by numbers first before you try to paint the Mona Lisa.

If you have your hart dead set on using putty I would get some older cheaper bodies and work with those first that way if you mess up you wont have ruined an expensive body. You learn that way and after you have mastered putty and styrene then you can move up to the more expensive bodies.

Also as Superfly said start with painting bodies because even if you have mastered putty and styrene you have to paint it and if you suck at painting no matter how good your putty job it will look like crap with a bad paint job. Don’t rush make sure its finished sanding and smooth before you apply any paint because whatever you missed the paint will show the flaws the darker the paintjob the more flaws it will show!

Don’t get discouraged just take your time and be sure to learn from the pimps here ones like Superfly have had lots of experience and many of there threads have great tutorials and what to do along with what not to do! :grin:

Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2006 1:09 pm
by Juzi's Customz
Thanks, yeah im gonna try on a dodgy old shell my bud gave me, when i mean dodgy i mean absolute shit.