Hi everyone,

Building my first Dragon kit with white-metal schurzen. I used lacquer primer on the pieces and find that it and the covering layers of paint come off very easy.

Is there another primer that actually sticks?

Thanks!

Gaz

Try gently scuffing the panels with a Scotchbrite pad or steel wool.
Rinse with alcohol and after drying shoot it with a Rustoleum or Krylon type primer.

Joe Z------

Where are you at with a zinger?

Thanks mate!

Huh?

Same stuff that sticks to the wall.



Being that Gary is in Oz, he might be limited to sheep-based products which, unfortunately, possess inferior adhesive properties.



Seriously, automotive self-etching primer, like Rustoleum or SEM, is just the thing you are looking for. I use it on Dragon's stainless PE and AM aluminum barrels.

Sheep?? Are you confusing us with Kiwi's?? The sheep jokes belong to our friends across the 'Ditch'.

BTW, Gary is not originally an Aussie..... his accent is a give away, and he doesn't merge all his words into one like we do:

Gdaymatehowzitgoin
'aveagoodweek'nd

Best way to deal with the Dragon aluminium (?)schurtzen is ditch them. You will be forever trying to glue the hangers back on them.....

Make up replacements from 10 thou plastic card. You will thank me later......

....and to our friends in the states, that is pronounced like it is spelled:

Al U Min I Um

Not
A loo mi num

(Duck, weave, dodge, ......)

Aw, I was jus' funnin' ya. I know youse guys are known for cattle. Anna Creek is the size of the State of New Hampshire, which makes for a lot of steak. I also noticed that Gary, the modeling world's answer to Mel Gibson, types with an American accent.

Hah, hah, hah...

Very funny guys!

For the curious, there are actually more sheep in Australia than NZ.

Thanks for help with the Zinger.

And for sure I'll make the schurzen from card next time. Amazingly, the CA is holding sheet and hanger together pretty well so far. I imagine that during the weathering process I'll lose more of them.

Dang PZ IV variants! Too many wheels, and now too much extraneous steel.

Why couldn't the Germans have just kopied the Christie suspension??

still laughin....

I'm finishing a Dragon Pz. III M right now, and my schurzen are hanging on the supports quite nicely on their own. No need for glue. Might be the arrangement.

I also second a good spray primer on the white metal. I use the stuff at the local home improvement store (Rust-O-Leum is one brand here) that is good for metal AND plastic. Give it 24 to cure and away you go.

Epoxy cement. Works and holds better than CA which though quick has a lousy track record with metal figures. A CA bond breaks way too easily from any kind of handling. Sure it's old fashioned but then I still dry brush and paint all the tires(tyres?) before putting the wheels on.

Yes, it is pronounced the way it is spelled. In North America it is spelled Aluminum.

The original spelling was Aluminum, by a Brit.

Both are officially correct.

Here's why (from Wiki):

Most countries use the ending "-ium" for "aluminium". In the United States and Canada, the ending "-um" predominates.[23][94] The Canadian Oxford Dictionary prefers aluminum, whereas the Australian Macquarie Dictionary prefers aluminium. In 1926, the American Chemical Society officially decided to use aluminum in its publications; American dictionaries typically label the spelling aluminium as "chiefly British".[95][96] The earliest citation given in the Oxford English Dictionary for any word used as a name for this element is alumium, which British chemist and inventor Humphry Davy employed in 1808 for the metal he was trying to isolate electrolytically from the mineral alumina. The citation is from the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London: "Had I been so fortunate as to have obtained more certain evidences on this subject, and to have procured the metallic substances I was in search of, I should have proposed for them the names of silicium, alumium, zirconium, and glucium."[97][98]

Davy settled on aluminum by the time he published his book Elements of Chemical Philosophy in June 1812: "This substance appears to contain a peculiar metal, but as yet Aluminum has not been obtained in a perfectly free state, though alloys of it with other metalline substances have been procured sufficiently distinct to indicate the probable nature of alumina."[99] In September 1812, fellow British scientist Thomas Young[100] wrote a review of Davy's book, which was published anonymously in the Quarterly Review, a British literary and political periodical, in which he objected to aluminum and proposed the name aluminium: "for so we shall take the liberty of writing the word, in preference to aluminum, which has a less classical sound."[101]

The -ium suffix followed the precedent set in other newly discovered elements of the time: potassium, sodium, magnesium, calcium, and strontium (all of which Davy isolated himself). Nevertheless, element names ending in -um were not unknown at the time; for example, platinum (known to Europeans since the 16th century), molybdenum (discovered in 1778), and tantalum (discovered in 1802). The -um suffix is consistent with the universal spelling alumina for the oxide (as opposed to aluminia), as lanthana is the oxide of lanthanum, and magnesia, ceria, and thoria are the oxides of magnesium, cerium, and thorium respectively.

The aluminum spelling is used in the Webster's Dictionary of 1828. In his advertising handbill for his new electrolytic method of producing the metal in 1892, Charles Martin Hall used the -um spelling, despite his constant use of the -ium spelling in all the patents[86] he filed between 1886 and 1903. Hall's domination of production of the metal ensured that aluminum became the standard English spelling in North America.



From The Vault of More-Than-You-Wanted-to-Know.

You're welcome.

Paul

"White metal" is the wrong term to use. White metal refers to alloys containing high contents of lead or tin, such as most non-resin or 3D printed figures are made of. Silver colored PE is usually made of aluminum or stainless steel which is a real PITA to glue.

Don't know why Dragon doesn't use nickel steel for its PE, like Aber. Nickel steel is a helluva lot easier to solder. Or, just go with good old brass.

They did use nickel steel early on in kits such as German Tank figures (for Headsets and throat mics) and their Imperial Series 'Grille", just nothing short of using Thermalite or a Thermal Lance could heat it up enough to make it pliable enough to bend. Most modellers ditched it real fast

Gary, if you go to an automotive supplier like Supercheap or Autobarn , you should be able to pick up a spray can of Etch Primer in their rattlecan touch up paint section. It is designed to prime bare metal or plastics ready for the undercoat to be applied. That should be enough to make your paint stick to the Dragon panels.

Thanks, Peter!
I've still got a IVG in the stash with schurzen, but that one I'm going to do with ALL of the hull skirts missing. There's plenty pictures of those around.

BUt, since there are still many Schurzen-bound machines out there for me to build, It'll be handy to use etch-primer.

Gaz

Some of the Eduard etch I have is silver, but it's definitely brass, just nickel coated (I assume, since it's identical to a reel of nickel coated copper wire I have).

A quick scuff with some emery and it solders quite nicely.




Sound like some etch that came with a Dragon FW190 I did years ago.
Not only difficult to bend, but next to impossible to remove from the fret, and nothing I did seemed to let any glue stick to it.