*conclusions*Gunze SF compound.....

I grabbed some Gunze SF compound at the last show and was wondering if anyone has used it and has tips for its use?

I plan on trying it out on several different mediums tonight...will post my results.

Thanks

David

Ok, and so with that said, off we go.

First I was doing a demo at our club meeting and we had a number of automotive products in front of us for comparision. I used the smooth underside of a Monogram AH1S Cobra for my comparison piece, prepping it with 000 steel wool along the entire lenght to give a uniform dulness and some slight texture to be polished out by the different compounds.

My second piece was a painted fairing panel from a Tamiya bike painted with spray Tamiya Metalflake blue about a year ago so its good and dried out by now.

The Gunze polish product does not have any of the odors present in Brasso or theother metal polishes. it may be some kind of water bse and was not difficult to work with. It was about the most "liquid" of all of them making use in the large typical round bottle a bit more difficult.

I used dried Brasso on a rag, Blue Magic metal polish, Waxe Shoppe, SafeCut plastic polish for paint, the new Meguirs plastic headlight polish and finally the Gunze superfine compound. They all did varying degrees of polish to the prepped plastic. I used only the Waxe Shoppe Safe Cut and the Gunze superfine on the painted part.

As far as a polish on gloss paint, the Gunze started to dull the gloss slighly.  I brought the dullness back to life with the Safe Cut product which is a spot/haze remover.

As far as polishing plastic goes, all did varying degrees to polsih out the scuffed plastic, but the Gunze brough it to the highest state of polish. It did NOT remove the  fine scratches created by the 000 steel wood. but as a fine compound this wouldnotbe its job anyway.

 I would see the use in two situations, perhaps three.

1: polishing out a canopy, especially after voilence is done in reparing damage or sanding off frames. While other compounds would work out the bigger scratches this would bring back the clarity.  The same can be done with ohter product as well.

2: Polshing plastic kits that are not painted, or polishing plastic figure parts that are not painted. At thispoint you think I am out of my Vulcan MIND, but...hear me out.

There is a growing trend among Japanese modelers to NOT paint the plastic, especially with Bandaa kits. The result is a kit that has been built up with a minumum of putty and the plastic polished and shaded as needed since the plastic is molded with the 'correct' color anyway. This is fairly common in the Bandai / Gundam community. I have yet to try it on Bandai plastic, but Iwould imagine in thier Master GRade line of kits this would work well for that particular, and new, style of building.

Conclusion:

Frankly this stuff is pretty damned expesnive but at the time I had the cash and wanted to experiement.  I see that YES it polishes plastic well, but not so well on paint.  I would say that is is marginally better than the polishes used, but I would say the uses are limited.  

I will try to get some more polish up jobs done in the next few days and I will post if I see results that are any different.

David