| As the picture
above shows I have a lot more room in the garage.
Because many
of the assemblies are heavy and I need to move them around
whilst spraying I have acquired an engine stand to hold them
whilst painting. I found it easy to adapt the stand to hold
the tender and I hope to be able to spray each coat in one go.
I was hoping to get on and start priming
the tender today but once I got it mounted I could see that I
had a few preparation jobs to do. I had not yet cut off
the bolts on the bunker. Access was difficult and I was
stuck until I remembered I had
some mini cut off disks for my mini-drill. I found these
just the ticket. I used several disks but there
would have been no other easy way of getting to the heads.
I found that Acetone would remove the last
remains of the Isoflex. My next task before priming will
be to fill some of the cracks with metal filler.
Monday/Tuesday: Preparation
continued, it taking two full evenings
to finish preparing |
 |
| the tender and accessories. Having
filled the cracks and screw slots with metal filler it took most
on Tuesday to sand these back flush. My final preparation
tasks was to thoroughly degrease everything.
Wednesday: I shall be
painting many of the brass tender accessories and to ensure good
paint adhesion these need to be etch primed. (What
is etch primer?) I used
two part etch primer from Phoenix
Precision Paints applied with my air brush. I found
this easier to apply than their single part etch primer used
previously on my POP. With this
paint I had to be careful to avoid it emerging as a mass of fine
hairs - just like spraying cobwebs!
|
| The picture right
shows the etch primed accessories.
It is hard to see the paint since only a thin coat is needed and
the paint is a sort of brassy colour.
I have found it useful to attach
"stalks" to the smaller components whilst spraying, in
this case they are nails glued on with Loctite.
In my next painting session I will prime everything
with "ordinary" primer to give an even base for my
chosen colour. |
|
| Thursday:
Today was the first big painting session and I found it harder
than I expected. The tender is the largest thing I
have ever sprayed and I found difficult to apply and even
coat. I also found it difficult to get at the inside of
the coal bunker.
|
.
|
| Saturday:
The results of my spraying are not as good as I had
expected. In places the finish was quite rough. I decided
to rub down with fine wet & dry paper. This did the
trick. (see below I did not do this thoroughly
enough!)
I shall be painting the inside of the
tender black so I have masked that off. I will paint the
outside first since I plan to paint the beading black and
it will be easier to mask off just under the beading.
I used my airbrush to apply the top coat
to the accessories. The parts are small and I have had
much more practice using it.
I decided to use the air brush for the
difficult bits of the tender prior to giving the tender a
general coat with the spray gun. I did the edges, various
brackets and all the rivets. I can throttle the air
brush right back and build up colour in the cracks.
The last task of the day was to fire up
the spray gun and paint the outside of the tender. |
|
Disappointment
|
 |
|
| The
above pictures show two problems. The first shows fine
scratches on the tender side that I inflicted when I used a
course flap wheel in my angle grinder. I did not notice
them through the primer and would have expected that rubbing
down the primer would have further reduced them. The
second shows what at first I thought was dust but have since
concluded is paint splatters. Does the camera lie? These
pictures are several times full-size and taken close up from an
angle to get the "worst" possible picture. When
the paint has dried I will judge how bad things are and decide
what to do.
For
the first fill up of the spray gun I experimented and thinned
the paint "just right" testing it on bits of
card. When it run low I quickly mixed up some more, to
what I hoped was the same recipe. Too late I discovered I
had not put enough thinners in and it was coming out in
lumps.
I used a whole 250ml can of paint!
Where has it gone? Mostly on the garage floor!
|
| Sunday:
The tender looks good from a distance but close up it is not acceptable.
The worst problem is the paint splatter caused by a combination
of under thinning the paint and spray gun pressure/settings. |
| Today
I also discovered that there was a partial blockage in one of the fan
tail air jets of the gun. These should change the shape of
the spray pattern from round to oval by blowing sideways
into the emerging spray jet. Both air jets appeared to be
working but when I filed the gun with water I could see this was
not the case. I eventually managed to dislodge a ball of
paint using an aerosol propelled jet of cleaning fluid.
The moral of this story is to always check
equipment and paint (on each top up) before applying paint to
the model. |
 |
My
recovery plan is to allow several days for the paint to harden
and rub down the affected areas. With care I should avoid
rubbing down to the primer and be able to recoat with a thin
gloss coat.
Recovery
Tuesday
27 July: The paint was now hard enough and I decided to rub
the tender down with 1200 grit wet and dry paper. I found it
better to use it wet. It soon became apparent that I had
previously made another mistake. On rubbing down many of the
rough areas white speckles were revealed. I conclude that
this was the result of splattering from the primer stage and
failing to rub it down properly between coats. This account
is turning into "How not to paint a Burrell". Patience,
Preparation and Practice are essential; I seem to have forgot
these are the 3P's of painting.
|
 |
 |
Having rubbed down and cleaned the tender I
filled the spray gun with a fairly thin mix of gloss paint and
checked the gun on on white card. Immediately I could see
it was working much better, the paint being fully atomised.
The results on the tender were very encouraging, with the gloss
sheen returning after one of two passes of the spray gun.
Were I had rubbed down to primer (the speckles) I found it took
many passes to obliterate them.
The tender is still wet but I am hopeful
that when I inspect it tomorrow I will
be satisfied with the results. At fist sight it looks like I
have largely removed the scratches caused by the flap wheel.
This page has been split since even with
Broadband download times are excessive. Continue
here
|
