Revell Corvette Stingray with New Tooling
This is the seventh part of the Revell 2022 Corvette Stingray Z51 Coupe New Tooling 1/25 Scale 85-4556 14556.
Getting a good gloss coat down on a model is one of the things that easily makes a car stand out from the crowd. Unfortunately, for me, I’ve made the realization too late that I should have been sanding the paint in between coats. One of the things that kept me from doing this was the fact that I’d run out of Mr Color 49 Clear Orange, so I wouldn’t be able to add more paint to fix up any sanding.
So my paint will be a little bumpier than I’d like it to be. But next time, I’ll know what to do and I can make my paint a lot smoother.
I’m also pretty excited to try out a Clear that I’ve had sitting in my paint bin for a while now. But before I do that I’m going to have to finish up a few smaller details.
One of the parts I forgot to paint was the spoiler. This part required a lot of cleanup work, and there wasn’t a good way for me to grip the part for painting. I learned this trick from my brother when he paints his Warhammer 40k miniatures. Instead of leaving the parts on the sprue, he trims down a section of the sprue to a point and then glues it to the main part.
This worked incredibly well for me, as I had the spoiler secured allowing me to paint it with Mr Color 2 Gloss Black. Once the part was dry I easily removed the sprue and then attached the spoiler to the bumper section.
For the rims, I decided to paint them with Tamiya X-10 Gun Metal. I think that this darker metallic color will better complement the metallic orange. I think it will also help the inner parts of the brakes stand out as well.
There were only seven decals that I needed to apply, and most of these went into the center of the wheel rims. There are several choices included on the decal sheet for the stingray emblem on the back. I decided to go with the silver and black version. The decals are really thin which is great, and Revell printed them in silver ink so they complement the rest of the car.
However, these decals are a bit on the fragile side, and to make things complicated they are really tiny. I also found small flecks of silver when I was repositioning the Corvette emblem bags on the front of the car, but this was easily wiped away using a cotton bud.
I decided to add on most of the Gloss Black parts to the car body. These are going to be glossed over and it would be easier to have everything covered at the same time.
Here I’ve added all the parts to the bumper, minus the license plate holder and the four exhausts. The spoiler took a bit of care to get it to sit properly, I secured it to the model using some Mr. Just super glue.
Now that the parts were all added I was finally able to add on my gloss coat. I used Mr Color GX 100 Super Clear III. And once again I painted this on in three light coats. The Super Clear III is certainly a lot more glossy than the natural gloss of the Clear Orange, as you can see it’s really reflecting the surface of my cutting mat. But I’m going to try and make this a bit glossier. As well, I’ll try to smooth out the gloss finish.
Before I begin polishing the gloss, I wanted to show how my desk lights are reflected in the hood. It’s a nice enough gloss, but my hope is that with some polishing I can have a more brilliant looking gloss.
For this process, I’m going to use the Tamiya Polishing Compounds set. I initially bought these for cleaning scratches on clear parts, but I’m really looking forward to finally using them on a gloss surface.
I’m starting with the Coarse compound. I applied a liberal amount of the compound to the model working in small sections. I then used a Micro Fiber Cleaning Cloth that’s used for cleaning glasses and I polished the surface in small circular motions.
After a good while the Polishing Compound was used up, and I washed the car with some warm water and a gentle brush to remove any excess compound left behind.
The end result was that the gloss was a bit grey, and the compound had dulled out my gloss coat, and this is okay, in the next steps we are going to restore the gloss. I will also add that the finish of the gloss coat at this stage was a lot smoother than before.
To restore the gloss I’m using Tamiya Polishing Compound Fine (Blue cap), and just as before I’ve used a generous amount and I’m polishing in small circular motions.
After a short time, I could see that the gloss was restored and was already more glossy than the finish of the Super Clear III. And as before, once the polish had run its course I washed off the excess compound.
Lastly, I used Tamiya Polishing Compound Finish (White Cap), and this compound is a lot more runny than the previous compounds. As a result of this, I spent a longer time polishing the model as I wanted to make sure that every part was equally polished and nicely uniform.
Using these compounds I can see that you need to use a generous amount and that getting each stage properly polished takes time to get everything uniform. I’ve seen some modelers use a buffing wheel in a Dremel tool, and I think that would have helped out with the various sharp edges and curves of this Corvette. This is something I’ll have to consider next time, that being said I think that by polishing by hand you are less likely to damage the parts.
This is the end result of the polishing, you can see much clearer each of the LEDs in my desk lamp now. But I can hear you stating that this isn’t much of an improvement and that it’s not really a mirror finish. And you’d be correct in that.
There is a great improvement, but for some reason, it’s darned difficult to see, let alone photograph. When I turn the car body in just the right light I can see everything reflecting around me, it’s a really nice finish, but it’s really hard to get it at the exact angle. I don’t know if it’s the nature of the Metallic Orange, or the Super Clear III not quite being as clear as some of the new 2K Glosses on the market. Or just those sharp angles of the car reflect the metallic paint in an odd way.
So there is an improvement, but it’s unfortunately very difficult to see unless you see it in person. I’m going to keep this in mind for future projects, as well as test out some of the stronger gloss paints.
And that will do it for this week. There are a few pieces left that I need to paint, but I think that the next post will be the final post for this build. There isn’t too much left to do and I’ll be ready to assemble this model.
For polishes, I’m more used to using the NOVUS products, but after hearing a lot about the Tamiya Polishing Compounds I can see why people prefer using these. There certainly is a progression that you can see with each compound.
I’ll still use NOVUS 1 for cleaning clear parts, but I think as far as polishing clear parts and glosses are concerned I’m going to be using the Tamiya products. The Coarse compound is really great for removing smaller scratches and imperfections in clear parts, and using the trio of products I was able to recover a mostly frosted canopy I’ve been trying to restore on another project
I’m very excited to see all of the parts come together and be able to say that I built a car model in 2024.
To be concluded…
Jared Demes is a modeler from southern Alberta. He has been building models since he was 4 years old when his Dad first introduced him to the hobby. He has written for several magazines including, Fine Scale Modeler, Scale Aircraft Modeling, Phoenix Scale Models, and others. He has an interest in all modeling subjects, with a focus on WWII Japanese aircraft and Science Fiction.
Jared has won several IPMS awards for his modeling, and currently operates his YouTube channel rebelsatcloudnine, where he showcases model builds and product demonstrations.
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