Ladies & Gentlemen, Uncap your hobby knives
A given part will have it's own part # on it, or if it's small or full of body graphics, printed next to it, usually in color, usually in yellow. The part will likely have other smaller numbers on it too, sometimes even on the glue tabs- these are the numbers of the other parts you glue this one to.
On the partially built engine shown a little farther down, look close at the heads and you'll see three small squarish parts glued on, and three spots where they are missing yet. One of those empty spots has a number 7 printed there because the little square block pieces are all 7's.
A part marked 'L##' (L34 for example) goes on the left side, 'P##' is a right side piece.
Score your parts where they are to fold- makes a clean fold. So look at your parts sheet carefully because it's easier to make these score lines before cutting the piece away from having enough paper to hold onto easily.
If a part is to form a circle and glue back to itself, then DO NOT score that glue line, because it is a glue line, not a fold line. Some straight parts, like long frame pieces of flat body panels may have glue lines easily mistaken for score lines too.
I score lightly with the sharp side of the blade, which usually leaves a tiny bit of white paper edge to be colored later, but worth the extra effort I think. Some builders prefer to flip the knife over and use the dull side, or use a needle. Problem with that is it makes tiny ragged marks in the graphics. So no method is perfect.....
Fixing raw edges is done with the acryl paints or pastel dust or colored pencil. If you use the paints, try for a matte finish color because matte does not leave the small bump or build-up of paint a gloss will try to do. The actual finish doesn't matter because we will be spraying a protective topcoat on the finished kit anyway, dull or gloss- depends on the kit and what you like. This Tatra truck for example could be built bright and shiny, or weathered and dusty like if it just finished a race. Whatever we do with the bodywork, the tires need to be matte, so we might want to finish them before installing.
Score lines that will be made on the face of the part are marked with a black triangle and a solid line right at the fold. A white triangle with a dotted line means to score from the back side of the part.
A few odd notes- I have kits from many makers, and one of them suggests in the tool list 'some fabric to keep the hands clean.' Since we are working with acryl type glue and we will get it on our fingers, and it attracts dirt you didn't even know was on your bench- probably a good idea.
Every now and then a kit will have an 'extra' piece exactly like another piece there should only be one of, only printed a different color, or not printed at all. This will be a stiffening piece.
Sometimes it's not even on the parts sheet, there is just a note on the diagram about stiffening a certain piece. So you'll have to cut your own stiffening, just find maybe a blank area large enough on a parts sheet, or use a piece of standard copy paper- whatever works.
I have a Rally Car kit that shows scoring the back of the side body panels with a very blunted needle to make the body lines. In this case, there is also a long narrow triangle cut to make at the front and back as the body tapers. This cut is too narrow to have room for glue tabs, so it shows cutting small bits of paper, just whatever by eye, to bring the tapers together.
I cut the small bits in the shape of the ones that hold the treaded parts of the tires together. Sometimes there is just no room for a glue tab of any sort, like the angled part of the engine block shown on this page- it's okay, the paper edges stick together quite easily.
I actually have some of the private designer PDF type kits with no glue tabs at all. You just stick the edges together, and make glue tabs for wherever you want them. Okay, not my favourite way to go, but it works fine, just a little more thought involved.
Today we finish the engine
The pix with the mint background show a few parts put together from different angles, and the raw cut paper edges have not been shaded yet. Those edges may look a little obvious in the frames, but in real life they are not because the engine is only 2 1/4" long, so they show on the average computer screen enlarged twice the real size or more.
The rest of the frames (on the aqua background), show the finished engine. All of the parts are put together now, except the exhaust pipes. I chose to leave them off until the engine is mounted in the truck frame, because they are a little fragile.
The twin hoses on the back of the block gave me a time, I couldn't find those parts on the sheets. And then I looked at the instructions closer, and noticed a template looking thing with the right number on it, and the light bulb came on. While I can't read the Czech text, they were obviously hoses and meant to be made from what???
So it happens that my friend Mr Kilgore was here today taking down some worn out tube lights, and I remembered seeing these bits of wiring with black insulation on them..... I found the box of junk he's started, and there two sizes of wire in there, and yes! one of them fit perfectly. So I cut a couple of small bits, and I left the copper wire intact, so the hoses hold their shape. I didn't think the Elmer's would do for plastic/rubber insulation, so I mounted them with the Zap-a-Gap glue.
Another pair of parts made me think a while were the rear motor blocks or mounts. Found the parts on the sheet easy enough, but couldn't tell from the diagram how they bent or folded, or exactly how they went on the engine, wasn't for sure what they were either.
So each part has the number printed on it of the part it will glue to. I found the matching spot on the frame pieces, so that told me what they were, and they started to make sense. Now look close because these pieces are cut and folded different from anything else so far, but the spot we are meant to glue to and the glue tab will always be the same size and shape, so I figured them out from that.
The frames in blue are totally finished, the cut edges are shaded, I used a common pencil to shade the grey areas, and the really dark areas were too much for the pencil, so I used a dark Gunmetal paint.
I didn't try to paint just the edges, I did it the easy way and painted the parts entirely. And I discovered about halfway through it is sometimes easier to do the edge shading before the part is glued to the engine :-) That bit of pipe coming straight up from the rear of the block, I'm not sure where that will attach, or even if it does attach to something later so I painted the inside of it dark, so it's not glaring white if it does show later.
You'll notice the small pieces of orange paper stuck to the motor mounts- those are cut from a Post It pad, so they will peel right off when I'm ready to put the engine to the frame. I applied them because I wanted to do a light protective spray on the finished engine, and I didn't want to spray the mounts, I like to glue paper to paper, I think the bond is better that way. Actually it probably doesn't matter, but I took the precaution.
The protective spray in this case is Rave 4 hair spray, very light passes from about 18" back. I probably should have gotten a can of Testors Dullcoat off the shelf, but the Rave was close at hand. The can was nearly empty so it did leave a slightly shiny spot here and there, being low on propellent, but I will spray it again, when the frame is done and everything is put together, I'll Dullcoat the entire unit, so no matter.
