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Material for convertible top

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  • Member since
    November 2005
Material for convertible top
Posted by modeler bill on Sunday, July 29, 2007 2:55 PM
Would anyone know of the type of material/cloth to be used for a convertible top? 1930's style car in 1/16th scale. Thanks for your help. Cheers, Bill Palmer
  • Member since
    May 2003
  • From: Shrewsbury, UK
Posted by Martsmodels on Sunday, July 29, 2007 5:33 PM

 

An old cotton pillow case or similar works well for this scale.   Cut your pieces for the top and mix your colour (water based paint) up with some white glue reasonably well diluted with water.   Position the piece and let the material soak up the mixture (use a flat brush).   It will stick pretty quickly and shrink into place. 

 

Good luck 

Martin http://www.freewebs.com/martsmodels/
  • Member since
    November 2005
Posted by modeler bill on Monday, July 30, 2007 10:58 PM
I want to thank you very, very much. I can actually visualize this method and understand that it would work. Any ideas on leather for seats? I'm more use to 1/8 scale (Pocher models) and real leather would be too thick on smaller scales. Cheers, Bill Palmer
  • Member since
    May 2003
  • From: Shrewsbury, UK
Posted by Martsmodels on Tuesday, July 31, 2007 8:36 AM

Hi Bill

Yes - the model pictured there (1/16 Revell SS100) has leather seats.   You can get leather from all sorts of sources (soft bags, wallets, gloves etc from charity shops are a great source).   Choose the softest you can find and cut a piece oversize for the application.    Turn the leather over and thin the back with a modelling knife till it is not much more than paper thickness (be careful you don't cut through).  To stick the leather I use an ordinary household glue - smear the part with glue and apply the leather, stretch it and fold around the edges and trim as necessary.  Use the rounded edge of a steel rule to push the leather into the cushion folds if it is that type of seat.  Here's another pic of that Jag with the roof off so you can see the seat cushions.

And going back to your original question - the tonneau on that model was done in the same way as I described before except that this time the original plastic piece was covered with clingfilm before covering with the material.   When the glue/paint mix was dried the whole piece was then removed from the plastic and in this way it gives it a softer form (you can do this with roofs too but you really need a frame to fit it over for best effect). 

For more information on the leather there is an excellent tutorial on Alex Kustov's site at http://italianhorses.net/Tutorials/Leather%20101/lthr.htm

Hope that helped a little. 

 

 

 

Martin http://www.freewebs.com/martsmodels/
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