hi,
i assembled and painted a 2 piece head dragon 2nd generation figure
and the joined area is very visible ,looks like a strap.i painted twice,same result,i then primed the area let dry and painted the area again,no improvement.what should i do ?

Hi Amin,
Did you previous fill the seam using putty?
cheers
Antonio

Hi

You will never ever fill a seam with paint, the more you put on the more the ridges either side build up with paint as well, you will end up with so much paint the face will look like its wearing a mask and the seam will still be visible. Your best bet is to strip all the paint off and start again, but this time fill the seam before you put any paint on and that includes primer.

There are loads of fillers you can use, from the likes of squadron, Vallejo etc you can even use tipex, (snopak) or even fine auto putty (The knifing verity not the two pack sort).

Paul

Hello Amin,

I agree with Paul: get the paint of and start all over again. You won`t fill the seam with paint. As a small advice for the future: when glueing two-part plastic heads i add a little more glue as usual, wait some seconds for the glue to settle an press the two parts against each other with some pressure until some of the now liquid plastic is sqeezed out between the two parts. This plastic will form a small excess which you can easily cut off with a blade and sand over. This way, you have no seam, you won`t need any filler or putty and therefore don`t need to wait for the putty to dry. I hope, I could help.

Best Regards

Dennis

i will try the glue option first cause the putty solution scares me,and that is because since i will obviously have to sand i could easily damage the surface.thanks everyone for all the advice.

Another way to get ride of those pesky chin strap seams, scrap them off before glueing the two together. They are a pain to deal with. The glue method that Dennis suggested works good too.

the option that prefer is to use Mr. Surfacer 1000. Paint it into the gap with a fine pointed brush, allow it to dry for a few minutes, and then wipe the excess off with the same brush (cleaned first) and 91% isopropyl alcohol. No sanding needed and less chance of damaging the sculpt by sanding or scraping the plastic bead. The best part is that if you screw it up, you can just strip the Mr. Surfacer out and try it again.

Matt

i did use mr surfacer as mentioned in my first post resulting in no improvement or illimination of the gap at all.It is damage free true like a paint job.

Apologies if I'm misunderstanding, but I didn't see a mention of Mr Surfacer in the first e-mail. Am I correct that you used it as a spray on primer? If so, what I am suggesting is that you use the Mr Surfacer as if it were putty and use it to fill the gap and not prime the head for painting. i find if I put a small amount on a piece of index card and let it dry for 3-4 minutes it gets quite putty like and you can fill the gap with it. Basically, trowel it into the gap with a paintbrush to overfill the gap slightly, then wipe it off across the gap (not with it) with the small paint brush to leave the Mr Surfacer only in the gap.

If you did use it as putty and it didn't work you could always escalate to Mr Putty. I find that shrinks less than a lot of the other modeling putties. You could also use epoxy putty of course, putting a very thin rolled strip of it in the gap and blending it in with a moistened brush.

Matt

this too is a good idea to try and harmless.I tried painting it over the gap only after i had painted the assembled head with the skin tone but the result was zero as mentioned.I think this idea and the excess glue solution is harmless while the putty as you know could easily damage the surface if you are clumsy and dragon doesnt supply extra heads in their kits.

Another alternative (although a bit more expensive) is to use resin heads. Better quality and no seam lines to remove!