What technique or tool would you recommend for dealing with this filling and sanding problem?
Every single wheel has three ejector pin holes, filled with Bondo red putty. Now I need to sand them out. For this sort of thing, I normally use rolled up sanding paper or sanding paper wrapped around a stick. I am looking for a faster method that produces better results.
One idea is to cut a popsicle stick to the exact width, sand one end into a radius, and glue sandpaper over the radius. The problem is, a very small patch of sandpaper must perform a huge amount of sanding.
Use a flat blade to remove the excess material (No4 or No17).
If you have a punch and die set cut round sandpaper discs a bit wider than the holes and glue them to a stick, sprue lenght etc. Sand by placing the paper on the hole and rotating the stick, do not move back and forth. You can even superglue each paper circle atop the used one.
An another approach would be a glassfiber brush/ abrasive pencil (I can not recall the proper term)
Since I am a happy owner of a Punch&Die set I would punch small discs out of thin styrene and glue the discs into the holes.
My set has, so far, matched all the ejector pin marks I have encountered.
I use pure solvents (thinner) to “weld” styrene. This softens the plastic so that some
styrene goo can be squeezed out to fill the gap if the diameters don’t match exactly.
Small diameter mismatches can also be filled with CA.
I save food packagings made of styrene. These can be identified by the recycling marks, PS in a triangle or 06 or 6 in a triangle, sometimes spelled out as ‘styrene’, if there is no recycling info you can also use your favourite styrene glue/solvent to check the glue-ability of the material.
Many of them are vacuformed so they contain a wide range of thicknesses.
Deeper holes can sometimes need two discs on top of each other.
See the posts above about sanding and finishing.
The amount of sanding and finishing work will be less if styrene discs are used.
Note that the Punch&Die sets have many other uses.
Mine has round and hex holes, I bought it to make small nuts and bolt heads …
Those being the inside face of German wheels it appears. I would have done maybe some light scraping and then left them alone. As it will be difficult to see.
Since your in this spot, I would do as suggested and use a blade to remove to gross excess and than use Alpha Abrasives Plastic Sanding Needles or similar product to sand flat. You can find them at Hobby Lobby or similar stores or other online shops.
As for technique,I would use some Thinned Mr Surfacer 500,once dry,the “sanding” can be accomplished by rubbing with a Q-tip dampened with Lacquer thinner until the excess paste is removed.
But as was mentioned,since this is hidden,I would ignore.
Thank you for all the replies. The model is an Airfix (Academy) Tiger I.
@deerstalker36 Thank you for the suggestion. I know a few people around here use such tools. In this specific case, such a tool cannot not fit into the channel. I need something smaller.
@gtdeath13 Thank you for that suggestion as well. I have seen this advice in the past but never tried it. I do not own a punch and die set but do have a hole punch of the correct diameter. I will assemble a tool using an old wood paint brush handle.
@Uncle-Heavy While I do not have a punch and die set, my tool box contains three hole punches. When they are the right size and the ejector pin holes are deep enough, I do use the plastic disk method for filling. In this case, all the ejector pin holes are very shallow and I do not have a hole punch of the proper size.
@barkingdigger I have never used mud to cover ejector pin holes. Last year, I bought a product to experiment with the technique but it was garbage.
@Tank_1812 A ha! I vaguely remember seeing those suggested in the past and will pick some up. In this case, the holes are too deep to sand out but to shallow to fill with plastic disks. I did some tests and many of them are visible. The model designer at Academy… Never mind. It is what it is.
@Tojo72 Totally forgot about Mr. Surfacer! Pulled it out and am currently conducting two experiments.
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Can anyone recommend a good ‘mud’ product? The mud products from Vallejo are complete garbage. When this last came up, I think Matt recommended something from Michigan Toy Soldier. I watched a video where a guy mixed Scenic Cement with pigment powder and it turned out pretty good.
Doug, it’s VMS Smart Mud XL 2.0. Available here in the States through Michigan Toy Soldier, or directly from VMS internationally. It is simply the best mud product I have ever used. Cake it on, or dilute it with anything, and your model will go from pristine to bog dog in no time flat.
