Thread: Painting Matchboxes

>1 person asked how I did it, so here it is:

These are two 1:64 scale replicas I 'made' of our vehicles (minus running boards, chrome treatment, and a few other things that would have been decades more production for me) using some of the black matchbox Ridgelines they currently have out.

Process:

-The vehicles were sanded down to the steel via hand and dremel, slowly. -They were then masked, and I stuffed in foam rubber inside to prevent overspray onto the interior through the open windows. On hers the sunroof was masked, on mine it's painted as my RTS has no sunroof. I also sanded down the XM antenna on mine in step 1.
-Then used thin black automotive primer (from a can) and coated everything except the bed(s).
- put down 1 coats of the oem ppg metallic laquer via paasche vl2 airbrush, roughed it up where the signals and lighting went.
-White flat testors enamel under all the lights and signals,sanded.
-Parma fascolor custom mixed/thinned red and custom orange mixes on the brakes/turns, flat black for the front fog rings (hers) and painting of the inner bed/bed rails/trim/grills on both, pearlescent silver for the fogs (hers) , headlights, and dashed on the rear tails for lighting fx. Ended up doing all of the lights and grills etc. freehand beause you can only put on so much masking tape with the tip of two xacto knives before you go insane.
-While that was all drying I thatched up the bed of her truck (she has a big hardshell tonneau cover on hers) and mixed up some 5 minute epoxy. Waited a minute, then poured it in there while it was still self leveling but not thin enough to get through the gaps at the bottom of the bed. Though the epoxy retained the strange flat black hue from under it when cured, I put some of the flat fascolor on a fan brush and coated the tonneau. The hardest part of all of this was getting the epoxy perfectly level with the truck bed
-After drying for a bit I masked off the signals and stuff, laid down 2 more coats of the oem paint (thinned for an airbrush since step 1 btw, which IS quite fun .).
-Did a quick final sanding with 2000grit on any ugly areas, and put 2.5 coats of clear on both. Couldn't get the factory touch-up clear coat to come out of the airbrush so I ended up going rattle can with that, just held the can about 13" away and spray-dry-spray-dry about 40 times each coat.



Disclaimer: I work with computers to pay the bills, not paint stuff, so take this whole thing with 2 grains of salt

Originally Posted by slickwill

Whoa!! I wish I had even a little of the patience to do that. Way cool!

Yeah, I definitely don't have the patience I realized.

Originally Posted by figment

were these left outside to rust and needed a new paint job?

Nah, and they won't be either