These tips are from Wayne Gunnell:

• For inexpensive seatbelt material use 2mm silk ribbon. Simply do a search on the Internet for 2mm ribbon or visit your local craft/fabric store. (I couldn't find any 2mm locally - I purchased mine over the Internet.) To the right is a photo that shows what 2mm ribbon looks like in use.

http://www.smockingstore.com/silk.html#RIBBONS

 

• Regular household 'Future Floor Wax' works great as a glosscoat or clear coat. Airbrush it on full strength in light coats. usually dries in 30-45 minutes, It flows out real well and buffs up great. If you happen to spray too heavy and notice it turning milky white - don't panic, it will clear when it fully cures.

The discussion for using Future Floor Wax has been going on for years. Some say it does yellow after a time and some swear they have models 10+ years old that are still fine. I tend to believe the non yellowing side of the story. The manufacturer claims it's 'Non Yellowing'.

• Did you purchase a food dehydrator when you were worried about Y2K? It's been sitting in storage since, right? Put it to work with your model building by drying you models in your dehydrator. A model painted with enamels will be pretty much fully cured (good enough for polishing/buffing) in about 12 hours! Lacquers take less than 6 hours, and primers about 5 minutes or so.

Click photo to enlarge

The following tips come from Tex Ouderkirk:

• Small bottles of paint can be hard to identify in a tray, Take a moment before you clean your brush and paint the top of the cap. I mark metallics with a painted letter.

• Airbrush thinner usually comes in a container too large to handle when you only need a couple drops. Hair color squeeze bottles solve this problem, most of these bottles will even work with lacquer thinner.

• Metal split rings used in jewelry making come in many different sizes and can be found in the craft sections of most department stores. With a little "tweaking" with pliers they make perfect taillight and headlight trim rings, and they are already chromed!

• When doing major body custom body work, chrome trim and rain gutters can take a beating from files and sand paper. Half round Evergreen strip plastic strips come in many sizes and can be used to replace what's been damaged, either by completely replacing it or with a little putty to blend it in.

• When redoing chrome trim I work on a piece of glass, apply chrome foil burnish it into place and trim it on glass, it comes out perfect every time.

• Opening doors and trunks - Using micro drill bits, drill holes in the corners and curves close together and then thread a piece of button hole thread through a hole and use it as a saw, a #11 x-acto blade can be used for the straight cuts with minimal cleanup. Make a handle for the thread from metal tubing, somewhat like a coping saw, I use a "Flexi-File" handle