Effectively painting spoked locomotive and wagon wheels

[plasticbasher]

Hi All,

 

How do people paint their spoked wheels?

 

I have a couple of Hornby 0-6-0 chassis that started life as Thomas the Tank Engine.  The wheels have bright blue plastic centres.

 

I want to paint them black for use in some of my models, bear in mind I need to paint the front and back faces of these wheels or the blue will be painfully obvious.

 

Spoked wheel painting seems to be a bit of a fail for me; I always seem to make a mess of it, whether spraying or brush painting.  Common problems are:

• Either poor paint coverage or over-thick paint application.
• Unpainted spots that have been missed.

 

Hence this thread - I see some steam locomotives on here with wheels that look really nicely painted in lots of threads (I'm not talking about weathering, I'm specifically talking about painting them).

 

What are the techniques the great and the good use?

 

Cheers,

plasticbasher

Edited July 4, 2021 by plasticbasher

[Wheatley]

Quick undercoat of Chaos Black, then using enamel brush paint one side of all the spokes by turning the wheel one spoke at a time, then the other side, then the rim. There isn't a quick way. 

[plasticbasher]

Thanks Wheatley.  Is Chaos Black as brand of primer (google is not helping me out much).

 

Cheers,

plasticbasher

[Rumblestripe]

Chaos Black is a a product of Games Workshop and is their black primer (or was last time I used it) 

 

GW Primers (they do quite a few colours now it seems!)