Grendels: No problem, I'm no expert, but I'll do my best to explain common techniques and methods that will hopefully add to your repertoire.
Eastrock: Thanks! All modeling is surgery
Norm: Thanks man! Only for this past 5 months have I been using White PVA glue for almost everything. I use a thicker PVA, Aleene's Tacky glue. I use that mainly for gluing skins to frames, and parts that I feel I need more time repositioning. For pieces I feel I can get right in one go and need extra strength, I use Turbo Tacky Glue. For everything else I use Loctite's Super gel control gel.
I use a workable fixative, Matte Spray, and Preserve it! Occasionally I prefer to use varnish too, but nothing close to what I've seen others do with it. As for glue stains, from experience, I would say one has less than a second or so - and that's with the fixative on, to remove glue marks/stains. Even then, it's some "sticky" business and residue may still be left behind. I would say once there is glue on parts you don't like, then there's not a lot one can do to fix it. That's one of the more critical areas, as the builder needs to be extremely precise with glue. That might be an interesting topic to cover in a build log!
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F-15E Update (Pictures)
Talking about techniques and such, I thought it might be a good idea to show one of the more common techniques in pictures - rolling pieces.
Rolling pieces is some careful business - first you have to find the medium to roll with. This can be anywhere from kitchen utensil rods, or anything that resembles a rod. Personally, I use varying sizes of dowels, gradually going from a large dowel to subsequent smaller dowels to get a good roll.
Then, you need a soft clean surface to roll on. I suggest a never been used clean mouse pad.
What to watch out for is creases in the paper. The rolling medium, the surface, or a combination of both can cause this. From experience, I find that dowels increase the chance of unsightly/ unwanted creases if not used on a soft surface or if used incorrectly. Again, lots of delicate work as once there is a nasty crease, there's not much to do - either throw it away and re-print, or use it despite the flaw.
Here's the clean mouse pad, a 3-4mm in diameter dowel, and the piece to be rolled. Some notes - I bought a separate mouse pad for this purpose. The piece also has gray marks. These are from acrylic paints and I painted the edges before hand. This area won't affect the finish so it's fine to leave it like that.
Rolling, rolling, rolling! Firmly press down on the dowel and roll the dowel up and down the required area. In this case, the area is the leading edge. The process can take anywhere from seconds, to minutes. When using dowel grades, I usually take 5 minutes or so to roll one area.
Here's the dowel and the leading edge. As per observance, there's a slight upward curve at the leading edge.
Here's just the leading edge in focus. It could use a bit more rolling, but I'll do that when I get close to gluing it on the frames. The problem I see here, is that I could have cut the edge at more of an angle to satisfy the taper of both elements of the leading edge. I could chamfer the edge, but that's EXTREMELY risky business.
Results! No creases in the paper, so everything turned out to be just fine! The leading edge curve looks to be alright - the most difficult part will be getting a clean edge once I join the bottom portion.
And now time to go running! ;D
