Using a ruling pen

[grob1234]

Wow. Love how you have done the lining on the splashers. I think I will have to steal your method when I do some LNER liveries. I'm not brave enough to line splashers straight onto the model, ala Sir Ian Rathbone! 

[Ian Rathbone]

Darren, the ejector pipe and the pipes connected to it should be black, and no lining. You do not need to cut through Xtradecal, just score it well and lift the top veneer of paper, but only if you have a hefty layer of paint on it. Yes, it's flimsy but easier to position boiler bands and the like. Be careful with Microsol as it will distort transfers. Boiler bands and lining transfers can be fixed by over painting with varnish.

 

Ian R

[Pre Grouping fan]

Must say the work on here is excellent.

 

Just started doing SECR lining on a 4mm P Class. this ill be a mix of ready made transfers and ruling pen/compasses.

 

Bought myself a relatively cheap set of instruments off the popular auction site and a copy of Ians bible plus watching the dvd. After a bit of honing and some practice I attempted to do the valence ends, steps and buffer shanks. And to be honest im quite pleased with how it turned out.

 

 

Thinking now of doing the black edging with the red lining seen on the second image How is it best to attack this. Red lining first then brush black in? Any assistance appreciated

 

[Nelson Jackson]

Hello all, does anyone know where I can purchase a lining pen? I think the best way for me is to buy one and just give it a go!

[timbowilts]

first bet is that maligned site eBay? Closely followed by Amazon?

 

Tim T

[gaf2u]

Nelson

Maligned and all as that auction site may be, I have purchased quite a number via same over the past while in pursuit of a good one (or two!!!). A couple of pointers I have found worthwhile:

 

1) International postage on ebay.com items from the US is prohibitive, but if you have any friends or relatives resident there, you can secure some good bargains by having items posted to within the 50 states, and then forwarded to you privately. I have done this with success.

2) Search for geometry sets rather than simply pens or compasses, and if you're lucky you can secure some great sets that will have both pen or pens, and spring bow compasses, dividers etc

3) I have found that searches under the following manufacturers usually bear fruit:

• Haff
• Kern
• Leitz
• K&E (Keuffel and Esser)
• Dietzgen

The Haff and Kern instruments are particularly good. I have also purchased directly from Haff in Germany, but it can be a little cumbersome as payment is only via bank transfer.

 

4) If you're brave, the best deals by far are to be had on ebay.de. I have used Google translate to great effect, and purchased a number of sets and items from Germany via the German ebay. Once you find the item you want, try and search for it on ebay.co.uk (this used to be straightforward via searching for the article number, but ebay no longer quote these on item pages for some reason) to view the page in English. The prices from Germany are nowhere near as inflated as the UK or US, and postage is very reasonable. It just requires a little patience and effort. One word of caution - not all German sellers accept Paypal - you may have to do a transfer via IBAN / BIC, which is still not too bad.

 

Happy hunting

Darren

[grob1234]

Hi Darren,

 

Thanks for your post, I agree postage from the US is very steep when purchasing from Ebay!

 

Just to clarify a couple of points; I purchased recently directly from Haff (within the last 3 months), and they took PayPal which really made things easy. Their customer service was excellent, after bouncing a few emails back and forth they got me exactly what I wanted.

 

You mention Ebay item numbers. They are still present, at the top of the description page on the right hand side (this is on PC, I'm not sure if there is a difference on tablet/phone browsers). You can simply copy and paste this item number into the Ebay search function and it will find it for you. I think they have made the item numbers small so people can't find it when they use Ebay snipers which use the item number to bid.

 

Cheers.

[Nelson Jackson]

Huge thanks for your replies above, extremely helpful! I found this on the Haff website, would it be suitable? (Far left one, €34.96)

http://www.haff.com/reissfedern_e.htm

[grob1234]

Huge thanks for your replies above, extremely helpful! I found this on the Haff website, would it be suitable? (Far left one, €34.96)

http://www.haff.com/reissfedern_e.htm

 

I recently bought No.228, the easy clean version, and from what little use I have made of it so far, it seems very nice. 133 is obviously a finer instrument, would be interesting to see just how fine it is in comparison to the one I have.

 

PS: it might depend on what scale you're modelling?

Edited November 4, 2017 by grob1234

[Ian Rathbone]

Go for the 228

 

Ian R

[Iain Popplewell]

 Gaf2u's earlier posting did kick me out of my lethargy, this is how I got on;

 

 

 I didn't feel confident enough to line initially directly onto the loco so decided to line the panels of the loco onto sprayed extra decal. Above photo shows equipment used. Bow compasses not from my Kueffler Esser set but picked up in a second hand market in Dinan France this summer. (4 euro's bit of honing and they came up lovely.)

Set out the panels in pencil and drew the corners first. Calculations of panel sizes can be seen scribbled on the black card working surface top right.

I set the radius of the compasses to 1.5mm seemed about right.

 

 

Then I ruled in the straight lines using one of my ruling pens from my set. (see earlier post.) The thicker individual lines are for use as boiler bands.

 

 

I then cut carefully and closely around each transfer with a scalpel. (once the paint has dried obviously)

I cut right through the decal paper, this was a mistake, I should have only scored halfway through to the backing paper and carefully teased the transfer away from this with a thin backing of intermediate paper still adhering to it. This was to cause problems later.

Edited November 14, 2017 by Iain Popplewell

[Iain Popplewell]

 I then applied the decals as you would normal waterslide decals, however having cut through the total thickness of backing the decals were slow to separate from the backing on soaking in warm water. I managed to apply most of the panels OK. but I did get a problem with wrinkling.

 

 

The above panel was beyond help and I soaked it with water and removed it. I then made up another panel, half scored through the backing, and obtained a much better result.

Edited November 14, 2017 by Iain Popplewell

[Iain Popplewell]

 Having had a bit of practice lining on decal paper I then felt confident enough to line directly onto the loco tank sides. I didn't want to lose rivet detail under decal film and to be honest the decal technique had not proved an unmitigated complete success.

 So I pressed on, lining with my Kueffler Esser pen the pen gap set using a piece of card. The rivets proved a useful guide to aligning the rule and lines. I then "cutback the lines" as in the Rathbone video using my dividers to mark 1.5mm in from the corners and lifting surplus paint with a fine brush dampened in white spirit.

 

 

Left it all to dry overnight then prepared to draw in the corners.

 

 

A couple of pieces of Tamiya masking tape at each corner was used to protect the paint surface from the compass point and with my bow pen compasses set to 1.5mm radius drew in the corners.

 

 

 I managed to draw in the corners with not too much difficulty. I was pleasantly surprised to find how easy it was to remove the more disastrous curves with a slightly damp fine brush allowing another attempt to be made.

 However my new found confidence led to exuberance and I removed a couple of bits of straight line applied the night before. (moral allow plenty of time for previously ruled lines to dry.)

 However all was not lost for I possessed a Windsor and Newton Series Seven Kolinsky 00 sable brush, Ian Rathbone swears by them, and the mere possession of such a brush is reputed to turn any tyro into an expert! At least that's what I hoped.

 So I attempted to paint in the two missing bits of line, " the two bits can just be seen above at the right hand end tank corners as a slightly more matt line." As initially drawn by me the lines resembled a series of blobs and I felt all was lost, but was pleasantly surprised to find that I could tidy up the blobs into something resembling a line using the paint lifting technique.(Rathbone video again.)

 I had some hope that varnishing would blend the more matt patched line with the ruled line.

Edited November 14, 2017 by Iain Popplewell

[Iain Popplewell]

 So after touching in any paint scratches with slightly thinned paint and applying name plates it was time for varnishing.

 Always a nervous part of the build I find. The potential for disaster seems to me to be immense.

 

 

 I masked all matt areas, buffer beams and cab,  polished brass areas, chimney top dome whistle safety valve.

 One good tip, to maintain a clean line around the base of the polished part of the chimney, mask with a fine strip of Tamiya tape, then mask the rest of the chimney brass cap using Maskol. Buffer beam dome etc masked using Maskol.

 

 This loco is the second I have varnished and again I used Ian Rathbone's recipe as detailed in his book and video. It works for me and I'm disinclined to experiment.

 

 Recipe; 1part ie. 2ml Ronseal high gloss varnish. (the spirit based varnish not the water based varnish) add to two parts ie 4ml white spirit. Use a Tamiya paint stirrer to add two spoonfuls of Phoenix Precision Paints matting agent. ( a spoonful being just the spoonshaped bit at the end of the stirrer.)

 I mix the varnish direct into my badger 155 airbrush cup and spray at 40 psi.

 This mixture and pressure I find gives a fine mist of varnish and keeping the airbrush moving, and spaying not too close to the model I find you can get a pretty decent consistent varnish coat.

 

The final result of all this work;

 

 

 

Conclusions;

 

I'm quite pleased how she came out. For a first attempt at lining not too bad. The decals worked out not too bad but I feel lining the panels directly would probably give a more professional result.

 

Big thanks to Gaf2u for the inspiration to get going.

 

Big thanks to all who contribute to this thread especially Ian Rathbone and Coachman.

 

Very pleased to find that you can remove and reverse your more pronounced cockups by "lifting paint". Knowing you can do this helps your confidence no end.

Edited November 16, 2017 by Iain Popplewell

[Daddyman]

Really useful account, thanks. I'm about to start doing an NER Tennant so this will all come in handy.

 

You can't really go wrong with Ian's advice, can you? For some unknown reason I'd resisted going down his Ronseal route for years, and now I've actually tried it I realise what a liberation it is. I've never had such a good finish. 

[gaf2u]

Absolutely fantastic result Iain, and a really beautiful engine too! 

Onwards and upwards

Darren

[Ian Rathbone]

I will be demonstrating Painting and Lining at the Warley Show this week end 25/26 November at the NEC.

 

Ian R

[gaf2u]

Well, I’ve spent the past few months lining some locos that have been on the to do list for quite a while. There were some more learnings for me, over and above those posted previously on this thread.

Still using Phoenix paints to finish and line the yellow on the locos, with the exception of all-black freight locos which are done with Halfords satin black rattle cans and red lining which is Humbrol gloss red.

 

What went well?

1.      Change in the varnish ratio from 3:2 Matt:Satin to 3:2 Satin:Matt (standard Ronseal satincoat and mattcoat) thinned 50:50 with white spirit gave a nicer lustre. There were small discrepancies in the degree of sheen on some tender sides, but it is barely barely noticeable.

2.      Treating valve gear with Birchwood Casey brass black, and polishing same prior to final assembly gives a lovely metallic finish, and dispenses with the brass sheen, along with preventing future oxidation impair the finish.

3.      The Windsor and Newton Series 7 000 brush is absolutely gift for tidying up lines.

4.      The loco holding jig per Iain’s book and earlier posts is fabulous – couldn’t work without it.

5.      Humbrol gloss black and gloss red are quite easy to line with.

6.      I used a simple masking card to varnish the valve chests after the loco was assembled. Simply cut a rectangle marginally bigger than the valve chests, then hold the card with the hole immediately over the valve chests, varnishing via the airbrush through the hole in the card.

7.      I’m delighted with how some of my older K’s kits turned out – although the lining is very unkind to any footplates that aren’t absolutely level / straight.

8.      Leaving the spring/axlebox casting off the tender lower sides (per Ian’s advice) makes lining them so much easier. Fixed on afterwards with glue.

9.      I made templates up for positioning the tender lettering which worked very well (except for a Stanier tender finished with Testors (see below). The lettering is a little too high on this one, but I couldn’t move it because of a reaction between the meths and Testors lacquer during application.

10.  Leaving out the backhead makes painting the cab interior so much easier (esp. the cream above waist height). I’ll be doing this on all loco’s going forward.

11.  I loved the challenge, and the patience required.

 

What could have gone better?

1.      Varnishing at 40-45Psi was a testy affair – I found that the finish was inclined to be mottled or orangey peely with the air full on. Reducing the airflow via the airbrush trigger, or lowering the compressor pressure (whilst trigger is depressed) to 35 Psi gave a smother finish and less flooding. I only had one run in the varnish coat over a joblot of 6 locos and one coach, but it required waiting and multiple passes for each of many spraying cycles.

2.      Windows – the Micro-Kristal Klear is excellent, but I did have two windows out of 25 or so that I will have to remove and redo.

3.      I used Testors satin spray lacquer on some of the black freight locos prior to putting on the HRMS transfers (methfix). A big disaster – even after having had a few days drying time, putting the dilute methylated spirits onto the body of the loco “dissolved” the Testors lacquer. IT was all recoverable, and the locos were sprayed with Ronseal per above after transfer application.

4.      I was thinning the Phoenix lining paint with white spirit as the weeks progressed but it was losing its creamy consistency and skins seemed to form quicker on the paint in the tins the less that was in them. I gave up on trying to finish the tins, and binned any that were less than 1/3 full. My lines weren’t flowing, and they were too thick. Phoenix have agreed to provide me with some raw resin for which I’m now waiting to see if this will help going forward.

5.      I have learned not to leave masking tape on for too long – it didn’t lift any paint, but neither does it leave a crisp edge against which to line if left more than a day or two.

6.      Lining steps (particularly immediately behind the buffer beam or beneath the footplate is very awkward – started using transfers here.

7.      Speaking of transfers, I have many sheets of HRMS transfers. IT seems to me like the older straw lettering sheets I have are better than ones purchased more recently. Aside from the fact that the font colour is different, the new ones do not adhere well to the surface, lifting very easily when trying to remove the backing paper, or even later prior to varnishing. Extreme care had to be taken when applying and prior to sealing these.

8.      Setting out the transfers, especially the cabside numbers can be tricky. I’ve one set that’s slightly off centre, so will have to take more time at this going forward.

9.      My Decalfix homemade transfers (splashers and firebox/smokebox lining)also required car and attention post application and prior to varnishing, as they were susceptible to lifting if disturbed in any way.

10.  Applying nameplates with super glue requires a very steady had – any shifting around smears glue on the paint surface outside of the plate area. Had this calamity once – trick is very sparing use of glue, and patience.

11.  Extreme care required with a mini-drill post completion of lining/varnishing! I managed to cut two small chunks out of the edge of the tank sides of the Fowler 2-6-2T why making room for the drive motor, duh! Fortunately lining is intact, so squadron green and some deft satin black on a brush will remedy things.

 

I still have some touching up and finishing to do here and there (cab floors, doors etc, but in the round almost finished. It’s back to Missenden for the Spring weekend with Mick Bonwick for some weathering tuition now, and a quite advisory word with Ian Rathbone I’m sure too.

 

All the best – some pictures below

Darren

 

 

The completed Princess - K's loco body, Comet chassis and Tender kit. Gold lettering

 

 

The completed Duchess. DJH loco/chassis/Tender.

 

The two sisters side by side

 

 

The completed Gibson Crab. I really loved this kit - definitely more complicated to assemble, but superb detail. Probably my nicest lining job this far.

 

This is the Fowler 2-6-2T from earlier posts, (minus the two chunks on the lower front edge of the tanks thanks to careless mini-drill driver!). Chassis is a Gibson affair, but has tried me no end and hence is incomplete. End is in sight though.

 

$F with two different lettering colours from the like numbered HRMS transfer sheets. Some  weathering will look after this - roll on Missenden.

 

[gaf2u]

Forgot this one. K's Loco body again, Comet Chassis and Tender.

THis one has the high lettering on the tender side, where I encountered the problems with Testors lacquer and methylated spirits mixing?

[Brocp]

Absolutely brilliant work there. On the nameplates, try using evostik impact. It gives you chance to move the plate and anything that oozes out can be picked off with fingers easily.

 

The only critisim i have is that Abercorn has the wrong tender, that's a destreamlined tender like 6220-6229 and 6235- 6248 had once they lost their streamlining. 6249-6252 had those tenders from new too.

[grob1234]

Forgot this one. K's Loco body again, Comet Chassis and Tender.

THis one has the high lettering on the tender side, where I encountered the problems with Testors lacquer and methylated spirits mixing?

IMG_2219.JPG

Ronseal doesn't suffer from the same problem?

[gaf2u]

Tom,

No - Ronseal works perfectly with the transfers.

 

I have a number of Testors rattle cans, and I was trying to avoid having to set up the airbrush/extractor and mix the varnish to apply Ronseal. As is almost always the case, there are no shortcuts! About 15 seconds after applying the diluted methylated spirits to the Testors lacquer, the lacquer practically dissolved and disappeared, leaving me trying to apply transfers to the matt surface beneath, which isn't ideal.

 

Exacerbated by the fact my current stock of HRMS transfers are more difficult than usual to work with (they don't adhere well, and it is difficult to get the backing paper off without disturbing their positioning as a result).

 

Cheers

Darren

[grob1234]

Couple of questions - 

 

Is the Ronseal impervious to white spirit?

 

Also, if you colour of choice is in matt, what varnish is recommended to apply before lining?

[gaf2u]

Tom,

Ronseal is impervious to White Spirits once you give it sufficient time to dry fully. I don'd have a scientific answer as to how long is required, but I personally I tend to have models varnished for 2 weeks or so before I line them, and this has never then presented me with any issues during lining around the use of white spirits for tidying things up (or even washing off complete sections of lining I have messed up). You could I'm sure get away with a shorter period, but some trial and error may be required to find the sweet spot.

 

For lining you need a gloss finish to ensure the lining paint flows as best possible. Thus, regardless of base coat, for best results you should varnish with gloss. Post completion of lining (and transfers), you can varnish again with your choice of wherever on the matt/satin/gloss continuum you desire.

 

I will add to my prior post that my disdain for Testors has increased further. I applied Tamiya masking tape to a model I was weathering during a fantastic weekend at Missenden with Mick Bonwick, and upon removing the tape, it took off portions of the lacquer, and the transfers beneath same. Given that the room was full of fellow modellers, the tirade of expletives were limited to my inner voice alone. Only varnish over transfers for me going forward.

 

Cheers

Darren

[grob1234]

Thank you Darren.

 

I have been experimenting with varnishes and so on for lining. I have found that my normal Alclad varnish is somewhat impervious to white spirit, but not to the extent that if I mess up a whole side (highly likely) that I could then remove it and not spoil the varnish. 

 

My lining seems a bit hit and miss at the moment. I am finding it difficult to get the paint consistency right. The black I have seems OK, and also the red, but the white seems harder to line with. I have given the pen a very very light polish with 4000 grid polishing pads, but I am reluctant to go too far as I don't want to completely ruin the pen. I suppose practise makes perfect, I'm just impatient! 

 

Looks like I will have to invest in some Ronseal polyurethane varnish, it looks like it is very nice to work with.