hi,does any of you small scale modellers some tips concerning the building and painting of a 1/72 kit?

paints?material?..?

I use the same material as I do when building 1/35 scale kits, although I only use an airbrush when painting (as opposed to spray can). A spray can will coat too heavily and obscure detail. An airbrush will give you the right amount of coverage.

I use photo etch with 1/72 scale as well. It helps make some of the thick pieces more "in scale".

Basically i go around here read what the 1:35 modellers say and adapt it to 1:72 most of the time it will work.

Always make sure your workbench is very clean before you start cutting off pieces from the sprue.. some things are so small you'll never find or see them again....
and definely watch out for the carpetmonster.... by now mine should have just about enough pieces to build his own 1/72 tank..... lol.
1/72 is very fun to build, but I would also advise to use an airbrush to paint the general colours.. Painting with brush is tricky because you have to make sure the paint is thin enough not to cover to much details!!
anyway, I hope you have fun building and look forward to seeing your first pics

And if you drop a PE part consider it a gone, another sacrifice to the carpet gods.

PE for 1:72 ? Miniature Madness I think. :-) . Look, you can't see the dash but the dail has got the numbers on it.
Just a question as you never know, I might even start in braille when my wife will no longer put up with an ever expanding hobby (she looked worried when I unpacked the 1:32 BF109). Is PE for 1:72 as expensive as for 1:35? I know the kits are a lot cheaper.

Cheers
Henk

Henk, here is a photo I've posted to show people the size of 1/72 scale PE and the detail it encompasses. The coin next to the PE set is a US 1 cent coin called a penny. It is our lowest denomination of coin and a relatively small coin at that.


Part and ExtraTech tend to have cheap PE sets, well under $10. Eduard has started to up the price of their PE sets and some are in the $20-25 range. Comparable to the 1/35 scale sets. I tend to avoid the Eduard sets since you pay for a lot of PE you won't use.
Part and ExtraTech have a reasonable amount of PE for around $6.

That looks like a challencing set! I take my hat off to people who can work with that! Thanks Sabot.

Henk

I've found you have to lighten up your paint color. For example, mix a little flat white in with the olive drab, at least more than what you would for larger scale. The models just look better that way. Also, I like to weigh my minis down some with a couple of steel nuts or something super glued on the inside. Because of the lack of plastic, the small scales are too light for my taste. They do need to be handled with more care this way, as a dropped model could cause alot of damage. Also, one time I had a piece of steel come loose inside a finished tank. I really didn't care for it rattling around in there!