For Christmas, mum received a "Diamond Dotz" kit to produce a picture of a gecko. She sat for hours, happily picking up little hemispheres, and sticking them to the self-adhesive background. Following the instructions, she's produced a very attractive picture, and thoroughly enjoyed herself doing it.
Included in the kit is a plastic funnel-tray that looks a lot like those used for pills. This allows you to pour some dotz (Yes, I know. It's Amercian. Nuff said.) back into their little packets once you've finished dotting.
To apply the plastic pieces, there is a tool with a hollow end. This is poked into some wax supplied for the purpose. It grabs the dot, assuming it's the right way up, but lets go once the dot is on the sticky picture surface.
This is all very neat, but there a lot of dotz left over, and I'm wondering how useful they would be as fake 16mm scale rivets? I've seen people use tiny "jewels" for this job. The dotz are 3mm in diameter and 1.3mm tall. They aren't hemispheres, but slightly faceted. Not enough to show under a coat of paint I suspect.
I might get the chance to try this theory out as it looks like there will be more of these kits arriving in the future, and that means more leftover dotz!
They would be quite big in 16mm scale for railway use - but I wonder if they would work on a large scale model boat?
ReplyDeleteAs for the things being 1.3mm thick, I can't help wondering how thick a layer of paint is.
ReplyDeleteUnless paint is being "laid on with a trowel", or there are lots of layers, the "dotz" are likely to be significantly deeper than the paint - so seeing their outline through paint is unlikely to be much of an issue.
The real issue is more likely to be their size.
As for using stick-on "jewels" in model making, I understand that a number of people have used them to represent lights on models. I seem to recall reading about this in a David Voice book about tram modelling in scales like OO or HO.
(I might be mistaken - but I also seem to recall seeing some of the things supplied in model tram kits for this purpose. However, it's a number of years since I bought any of the kits in question - so it's possible that my memory might be playing tricks on me.)
Just in the process of adding 2mm half round pearls to an IPEngineering Darjeeling Van. 3mm is probably a bit big. It needs hundreds but what I have done so far looks good. (I would add a photo but dont see how). The device you have looks really useful. Will see if I can get one on its own. I have been picking them up with tweezers (losing quite few as they ping off to be lost in the carpet forever) and then dipping the flat side of it in superglue before placing on the model.
ReplyDeleteThe pickup devices are available separately - possibly the most useful thing here. I could see it being possible to make something similar from tube too.
ReplyDeletePhil, I thought you used jewellers pick up sticks? Do these have more sticking power?
ReplyDelete