washing your models...

Wash the plastic and resin in water with dishsoap added. For the PE, I tape my PE to the bottom of a bowl, flip it over and put it on a saucer with vinegar in it. Leave it over night. This causes the PE to roughen up and allows the paint and glue to stick better

I have the best luck with a very gingerly applied alchohol bath, getting into nooks and crannies with a soft bristled artist brush. Sometimes good old dish soap and water will degrease just fine. I have used the airbrush filled with isopropyl alchohol and "jet sprayed" gunk out of nooks and crannies as well.

Steve

ON the occasion where I am patient enough to wash the model I blast rubbing alcohol through my airbrush at about 25-30 psi. That pretty much gives it a bodily cleaning and doesn't take long to dry...

i just wash the kit in dish soap and the PE in alcohol. Never had a problem with paint sticking to it.

thanks a lot guys!! great info. so you just let the acohol and soap and vinegar dry off??

Makes sure there is no soap residue on the plastic- rinse it good. I let the plastic and resin air dry- if you want to dry it fast, use a lint free cloth. As for the vinegar trick, when I do it, the tape hangs the PE fret above the vinegar in the saucer, so just the fumes get to it (sometimes the tape loses it's stickiness and falls into the vinegar. In that case I just rinse it off). It's like the old grade school experiment where you turn a penny green

This will sound horrifying, but I don't prep my models. The only preperation the plastic gets before paint is a quick apply and whiping session with rubbing alchohol. Seems to do the trick, because I havn't had any problems with it and everything works great.

Hmmm...I really don't wash my kits before painting unless they are really oily or greasy. Actually I just build out of the box and seldom work with PE so I am not really that experienced in things like that. Lucky me perhaps that I have not encountered any problems with painting on unwashed kits yet.