Beginner's guide: white metal road vehicle kits

Paul Bason gives a step-by-step guide to building your own cast white metal road vehicles. Building your own vehicles means that you have the chance to own rare and unusual vehicles only available in kit form which you wouldn't otherwise be able to have in your collection.

1. Undo the packaging and spread out the parts on the modelling bench.
2. With the help of the instruction sheet, sort out the pieces so that you can discover what fits where and in which order they go together.
3. Clean up the parts ready for assembly. Carefully trim odd bits of surplus metal by using a sharp modelling knife or lightly file with  small fine flat file.
4. Burnish parts with a fibreglass brush so that the glue will stick to the part's surface in due course.
5. Stick the larger parts together using a fast setting epoxy resin and then use a medium viscosity superglue to add the smaller parts and some of the fine detailing.
6. Cocktail sticks or sharpened matches are the best tools to apply the glue.
7. The other option is to use low-melt solder. As a word of warning, stick to using glue unless you are reasonably experienced with the soldering iron.
8. Remove any surplus glue and once again clean and burnish the various assemblies.
9. Give them a couple of coats of aerosol applied car primer in readiness for painting.
10. Hand paint or spray models.
11. Finally, apply a protective coat of satin varnish.

This excerpt is taken from the article 'Beginner's guide to... building cast white metal road vehicle kits' as featured in the August issue of Diecast Collector. Find out what issues of the magazine are available to buy from our store by clicking here.