Alexander's Workbench - RWS Bodges Revived

[Nile]

Maybe the cab needs to be a little taller. Or maybe it will look ok when painted. Hard to tell at this stage. Dare I suggest the new dome is looking a bit tall in relation to the chimney, maybe lower one, raise the other, or a bit of both. And it is a reverser.

Cracking stuff so far, keep it up. 

[RAWRlab]

Maybe the cab needs to be a little taller. Or maybe it will look ok when painted. Hard to tell at this stage. Dare I suggest the new dome is looking a bit tall in relation to the chimney, maybe lower one, raise the other, or a bit of both. And it is a reverser.

Cracking stuff so far, keep it up. 

The height is weird, but it can't be any taller because it's currently just under the height of an A4 cab, which means I've already gone over my desired height. 

Much agreed on the dome though. I'm going to take it off and re-do it in the next update. 

 

Something tells me that once I get the firebox shape done, the cab will look right. 

[Corbs]

What I would do is sand it back with some fine grain sandpaper, and hit it with a coat of primer - the contrasting colours and textures make it hard to judge so a bit of uniformity may help a lot. Good work so far

Edited November 25, 2014 by Corbs

[RAWRlab]

What I would do is sand it back with some fine grain sandpaper, and hit it with a coat of primer - the contrasting colours and textures make it hard to judge so a bit of uniformity may help a lot. Good work so far

Yeah that's a good idea indeed. I don't like the way that primer interacts with my glue, so I might save that until I'm done with the firebox. But you're right, the uniformity always makes a huge difference  

 

Thanks for contributing also. It's great to have people commenting 

[TheCuckoo]

I love stuff like this. I think its the sheer seat-of-the-pants feeling it has. Keep it up please. 

[RAWRlab]

Okay, so, after a long time away from any modelling, I'm returning to this. 

Basically, I did a lot of work which I didn't bother to document and upload, but packed up all of the equipment after my family got a puppy two years ago, and I didn't want him killing himself on various paints and sharp blades. 

I also gave up because painting was my least favourite part of the process, and I didn't like how the lining turned out, and I didn't know how to make it better. 

But now I have a plan. 

 

So, here is where the project stands: 

You can see that I got two boiler bands in, then pretty much gave up. I never finished the tender or the splashers. 

The once piece of modelling that I am particularly proud of is the pony truck. From a distance, when I took this thing out and dusted it off, I thought I'd torn the flying scotsman one off and cut it to size. Turns out I'm just good at impressing my future self. (or, at least, I was impressed given the rest of the craftsmanship.) 

Nice front view. I was concerned about the cab looking too cartoonish before. I quite like it now. I will, however, do something with the windows. 

Other side. I damaged the pony truck showing this off a year or so ago. Still didn't rebuild it. 

View of internals. Could use some work, and a whole lot of weathering. 

 

So, where am I taking this? 

1) adding details. I'm going to add lamp irons to the front and the tender. I'm going to put a ladder (made of railings) on the tender's ass. I'm going to add the B12 handrails to the boiler (after repaint) and add handrails to cab and tender sides (before repaint). 

Also, just fix up bits. Probably the cab roof, which you can see from the first photo is far from perfect. Also the pony truck. 

2) CAD up a few small parts. I'm almost through my engineering degree. I have access to computer design programs and 3D printers. I'm going to make frames for the windows, which I will paint white or gold and stick on. I'm also going to make a shovel, a lamp, a toolbox, and anything else I think I might need. 

3) repaint the whole thing in base layers of paint. Get rid of the lining. Fix up where the paint job is bad. 

 

Now, here comes the fun stuff. After research into custom making and applying transfers, and different lining techniques, I've decided that I like the simple approach the best. I'm going to buy a bow pen (a lining pen, a technical pen, an architects pen, whatever you call it) to apply the lines. It will be the same colourscheme - white outer line, blue inner line - but the lines will be much closer to the edges. I'll design a few plasticard jigs to make sure this happens. With the metal work I've been doing thanks to engineering, I'm must better at doing things properly, taking time, measuring properly, and making processes easier. Hopefully I'll have a better time of this. 

 

Then, I'm going to spray it in matte varnish, and have a first go at weathering. It will only be light, because I imagine an engine as nice looking as this will be would be washed regularly. Hopefully I actually like the result. After that, another coat of varnish and she'll be the best she can possibly be. 

 

Future Projects: 

I was working on a Percy - the standard Nellie and Pug cut and shut. That ground to a halt because it all glued together on wonky angles and I couldn't figure out how to attack plastics to metals. I may work on that, but it's not my priority. 

 

My priority is that my atlantic engine will pull a mail train. I've got three passanger coaches - two GW suburban coaches and a crimson and creme Maunsell. I'm going to be using the instructions from here http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/75178-reproducing-varnished-teak-improving-latest-Hornby-thompsons/ to convert them into teak coloured monstrosities. My practice job at this will be a late BR crimson Gresley sleeper coach, which will be the first 'parcels' van when it's all painted over. This stuff will all go into a seperate topic in the weathering and painting board. What will go here is my attempt to build my own mail coach from plasticard, using a lima LMS bogied mail coach base. It will get finished up in teak like the rest, and hopefully it will be an impressive rake all together. 

 

Glad to be back. Pester me if I don't update things, because I want to get these moving along!

[RAWRlab]

Okay, so I'm waiting to get a hand drill set to start repaint work on the atlantic - i want to have all details in and painted so I don't have to mix up the maroon too many times and get it wrong. 

 

But I started on the next part of this parcels trains - the coaches. 

The stock I will repaint are: 

1 GWR suburban brake. 

1 Mk1 Suburban coach 

1 Gresley sleeper coach 

1 Siphon G wagon 

 

I now have these two designs to make myself from plasticard: 

 

For the short one, I had the idea of cutting up these two four-wheelers and gluing their chassis together into a six wheeler. 

 

I then went to town making a coach side - just to see that I could actually do the detail I wanted. I made the wall from 40thou card, and the linings from strips of 10thou. Really killed the glue on the first one, which led to the whole thing becoming pretty mucky. I hope that I can sand off the grime sufficiently enough that it doesn't show as bumps through the paint. 

 

As you can see, I changed the design from the drawing once I realised how long this thing ended up being. It's almost as long as the bogied coach!
Speaking of which, that came in the mail. An LMS, short based, bogied parcels van with a severely damaged roof. Got it for cheap, but I didn't need the roof or the body anyway!

 

So, a whole lot more to make. Hopefully I'll get those drills later this week.
Thanks for reading. 

 

 

[LNWR18901910]

Nice work on the Atlantic. Mind you, Bachmann recently made a model of one.

[RAWRlab]

Alright, so another few years of absence and many forgotten posts. 

 

So I ended up completing the atlantic in the flat-maroon without the lining, and completing the coaches too. It turned out though that a 3-wheel coach base wasn't maneuverable enough for the radius of curve I own. I found that out when I ran them first (only a few weeks after the last post) on my intro-card for a TV dating show I was on. Evidence posted below (from Channel-7's facebook...) 

 

 

So I redesigned the custom brake coach using the base of a spare Hornby Maunsell coach, that I cut-and-shunted to fit the body that I had. 
They, along with my other coaches for ritual sacrifice to the parcel's train, were painted in accordance to the teak painting guide linked about. Didn't end up painting the Siphon G wagon though, but here are the results: 

 

^Custom coaches. Created handrails on ends using paperclips and the handrails for the doors using staples. Doesn't look whiz-bang, but gets the desired effect across. I'll probably pick out the handrails with a silver sharpie-pen to make them pop. 

The three other coaches. You can see how the wood-grain effect really works with the gresley coach, but not so much with the other two. Still, I tried to use the brush to create appropriate panels where none were necessarily present. 

I'm still not super happy with the locomotive, but I've got to learn how to line properly first before I'll be happy. I also have to find a way to stick down the tender body and the loco body to their respective chassis' in a way that's removable. If you know what that is, let me know. I also think that painting the whistle and safety valve in metal colours could be nice. 

 

Next Project: Percy

Next thing on the list: I wanted to create a Percy engine to go with my Thomas - a Pug-bash is in order! 
The victims, a Nellie body I got on ebay and a Caledonian pug. 

 

With this build (talking in past tense, because it's very close to completion. I really didn't take many photos this time so I'll have to disappoint straight up) I wanted to emulate the Percy illustrated by Gunvor Edwards in Wooly Bear. It should be noted that the illustrations vary considerably, even within this single book of four stories. This is the reference image I'll be using:

 

So, the model configuration: 

And of course, add in the sand/tool boxes (and writing this post, I realised that I missed the toolboxes by the cab. Whoops...I'll have to go back and add those).

 

Now, the next picture is it all cut-and-shunted, parts made, moulded together, the works: 

 

 

What had to be done? Well, I after putting the saddle tank in the middle of Nellie, I had to significantly shorten the bunker to make it fit on the chassis. Then I had to fill in the buffers, which weren't sure where they wanted to be the wooden blocks of a pug or full-formed buffers, so just chose to be both (thanks lazy Hornby 0-4-0 mouldings). So I made the buffer beam flat faced, then added some details. I took the coupling hooks of the mainline Pannier tank that supplied the dome for my atlantic engine, and made some lamp-irons and vacuum pipes from staples. 

The sandboxes are made from stacks of plasticard smoothed together with modelling putty. Everything always looks much worse under the primer, but my painting will prove worse still, so perhaps it won't matter in the end. 

 

Updates to come - hopefully not with three years between them. 

[RAWRlab]

I created the missing details after noticing them on the source material. These included the toolboxes in front of the cab and the fillercaps for the sandboxes on next to the smokebox. 

 

I touched up some of the obvious seems with putty, as well as adding to the new toolboxes by filling them out with putty. I sanded it all back, and applied the next coat of primer to check if it was smooth. I ended up getting rid of a lot of the cracks I'd noticed with the initial coat. 

 

 

And then there's the very first coat of paint. I'm thinking it'll take three or four coats, but I've gone for the light colours first so that I only need to apply the black areas carefully ;). 

 

I've also noticed by first issue: It's not easy at all to take apart the Hornby 0-4-0 chassis. The chassis isn't split, so the axles don't drop out. Then the wheels don't easily come off the axles (and I'm afraid to apply the necessary force to do so), and the coupling rods don't have un-screwable pins, which leaves me screwed. I'll have to get creative with applying the primer and paint to the wheels. Any suggestions? 

[Corbs]

Tiny brush, use a 9v battery to rotate the wheels a bit at a time by tapping it against the flanges. Keep it up, looks good so far!

[RAWRlab]

Thanks Corbs! Good to get some quick advice and encouragement . I'll update with how that goes when we get there. 

[RAWRlab]

I followed Corbs' advice in painting the chassis, and got it done pretty easily. Took about 4 coats of green to get the colour consistent across the engine. 

After that, I just "painted the rest of the owl". I bought some proper masking tape to do the lining, and it came out a treat - much better than any previous attempt. Got some gold pain for the dome. Budda-bing-budda-boom. That's a Percy. I'm going to leave the numbering and lettering until i get my hands on some transfers. 

Next step, get on the kadee couplers, because that's what I've transitioned my stock to using, per the club I operate at. It was difficult due to how low the body sat on the chassis, so I couldn't use the standard box-mounted couplings. Instead, I had to butcher the chassis to get some no.19 NEM kadees to slip into it at the right height, then glue the whole thing together. Got a bit of glue in the coupler's pivot pin which was annoying because the way I put the whole thing together didn't exactly make the coupler removable...I'll see if it loosens up over time. 
 

And then with a few fixes, the whole thing is done  (or...will be. I keep spotting paint spots in these photos that I can't see in real life :\ )

 

Next step, get my original project, Thomas, on the kadee train. Also a weird job, but it came along nicely using the same technique. For both engines, I mutilated the tension-lock hoops during install so that I could gauge the correct distance for the knuckle. 

Thanks for reading, more to come soon

[Justang]

I've just found this topic, but I think that your E2, Atlantic and Percy look amazing. You've done a great job with the paintwork on all 3.

[LNWR18901910]

On 13/06/2017 at 05:22, RAWRlab said:

Okay, so, after a long time away from any modelling, I'm returning to this. 

Basically, I did a lot of work which I didn't bother to document and upload, but packed up all of the equipment after my family got a puppy two years ago, and I didn't want him killing himself on various paints and sharp blades. 

I also gave up because painting was my least favourite part of the process, and I didn't like how the lining turned out, and I didn't know how to make it better. 

But now I have a plan. 

 

So, here is where the project stands: 

You can see that I got two boiler bands in, then pretty much gave up. I never finished the tender or the splashers. 

The once piece of modelling that I am particularly proud of is the pony truck. From a distance, when I took this thing out and dusted it off, I thought I'd torn the flying scotsman one off and cut it to size. Turns out I'm just good at impressing my future self. (or, at least, I was impressed given the rest of the craftsmanship.) 

Nice front view. I was concerned about the cab looking too cartoonish before. I quite like it now. I will, however, do something with the windows. 

Other side. I damaged the pony truck showing this off a year or so ago. Still didn't rebuild it. 

View of internals. Could use some work, and a whole lot of weathering. 

 

So, where am I taking this? 

1) adding details. I'm going to add lamp irons to the front and the tender. I'm going to put a ladder (made of railings) on the tender's ass. I'm going to add the B12 handrails to the boiler (after repaint) and add handrails to cab and tender sides (before repaint). 

Also, just fix up bits. Probably the cab roof, which you can see from the first photo is far from perfect. Also the pony truck. 

2) CAD up a few small parts. I'm almost through my engineering degree. I have access to computer design programs and 3D printers. I'm going to make frames for the windows, which I will paint white or gold and stick on. I'm also going to make a shovel, a lamp, a toolbox, and anything else I think I might need. 

3) repaint the whole thing in base layers of paint. Get rid of the lining. Fix up where the paint job is bad. 

 

Now, here comes the fun stuff. After research into custom making and applying transfers, and different lining techniques, I've decided that I like the simple approach the best. I'm going to buy a bow pen (a lining pen, a technical pen, an architects pen, whatever you call it) to apply the lines. It will be the same colourscheme - white outer line, blue inner line - but the lines will be much closer to the edges. I'll design a few plasticard jigs to make sure this happens. With the metal work I've been doing thanks to engineering, I'm must better at doing things properly, taking time, measuring properly, and making processes easier. Hopefully I'll have a better time of this. 

 

Then, I'm going to spray it in matte varnish, and have a first go at weathering. It will only be light, because I imagine an engine as nice looking as this will be would be washed regularly. Hopefully I actually like the result. After that, another coat of varnish and she'll be the best she can possibly be. 

 

Future Projects: 

I was working on a Percy - the standard Nellie and Pug cut and shut. That ground to a halt because it all glued together on wonky angles and I couldn't figure out how to attack plastics to metals. I may work on that, but it's not my priority. 

 

My priority is that my atlantic engine will pull a mail train. I've got three passanger coaches - two GW suburban coaches and a crimson and creme Maunsell. I'm going to be using the instructions from here http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/75178-reproducing-varnished-teak-improving-latest-Hornby-thompsons/ to convert them into teak coloured monstrosities. My practice job at this will be a late BR crimson Gresley sleeper coach, which will be the first 'parcels' van when it's all painted over. This stuff will all go into a seperate topic in the weathering and painting board. What will go here is my attempt to build my own mail coach from plasticard, using a lima LMS bogied mail coach base. It will get finished up in teak like the rest, and hopefully it will be an impressive rake all together. 

 

Glad to be back. Pester me if I don't update things, because I want to get these moving along!

I like your Atlantic model. I bet it runs well after conversion. Also, I like your RWS Percy model which is much better than Hornby's now-retired model.

[LNWR18901910]

On 10/07/2014 at 08:28, RAWRlab said:

Bought my Annie and Clarabel  - Grafar non-corridor LNER suburban coaches - I don't think I'll modify them, although they look a bit long when paired up with thomas (photos taken at my local club layout)

That being said, the coaches might be long but Thomas looks stupidly tall next to them. And that is because he is stupidly tall. Way too tall for scale I realised. The thing is that I didn't change his height from the original E2, they have the same dimensions (cab height varies by about half a millimetre). This then says that Hornby's E2 was stupidly tall also. 

The buffers are high too, which suggests that the whole model rides too high on the chassis. I would cut down the plastic joiners on the chassis, but that would cause the cab interior to foul to back wheel, and the running plate to foul the splashers. I think I'll just have to leave it for now which is a shame. I could cut it up, but not after all of the work I put into the paint job. It would be a shame to cut up the running plate and splashers (as these aren't hollow) and repaint them. I might do it in future. I'm not so concerned about the cab floor because it's not very visible anyway. 

 

Moving on with my 1F project:

I made a cab for the engine in much the same way as thomas' cab. I used a roll of duct tape to give me the curvature of the roof. I glued the cab top assembly onto the controls/firebox that I had saved. 

then I added in some little details - two pipes and two gauges - and placed it on the loco to check the aesthetics

 

Next I made the cab floor and back. I haven't found any really useful images of cab insides, so my detailing is basic, but goes off what I've seen on other models and what I think would make sense. 

At this point I realised that the floor fouled the wheels, so I would have to make functional splashers. I also added a bunker door. 

Then I built the splashers and made a nice looking lever. 

The splashers don't look right on their own because they're built to fit snugly with the firebox and control detailing on the cab front. 

 

more things coming,  thanks for you interest.

-Alexander

 

 

 

Your Midland/Freelance 1F looks nice. I take it it was an original Hornby Railways model you used, right? It's like something Hornby Railways would've have produced in the 1980s and 1990s as part of their Top Link Range by simply reusing their ever-popular Margate/China Jinty 3F model tooling albeit with slight adaptions.

[RAWRlab]

12 hours ago, Justang said:

I've just found this topic, but I think that your E2, Atlantic and Percy look amazing. You've done a great job with the paintwork on all 3.

Thanks Justang! I’ll be lining the Atlantic again soon, so keep posted. Appreciate the love. 

 

47 minutes ago, LNWR18901910 said:

I like your Atlantic model. I bet it runs well after conversion. Also, I like your RWS Percy model which is much better than Hornby's now-retired model.

Hi LNWR18901910 you’d be disappointed to know that the Atlantic doesn’t run that well at all :P. The traction tyres on the tender actually prevent the pickups there from working, so it’s only picking up from 2 axles. Not ideal. Also have to fix the wheel quartering sometime soon. 

 

 And the 1F i’m not actually sure of its origins, as I bought it at a country train fair when I was 11. Your assessment seems good, although i’m inclined to say that it feels late 80’s. 

 

Thanks for joining the thread

[Londontram]

Very much enjoying this thread its my sort of modelling. With the Atlantic could you not ad pickups to the front bogie? 

 A small bit of copper clad some nickle silver wire and some very fine flexible wire all available on the web. I've done this on a few bogies like this in the past and I know other on here have too.

 It's worth giving it a try and might be the answer to the problem.

 It might be possible to swap the bogie for one already fitted with pick ups there's plenty coming up all the time on the auction  site or available from one of the parts suppliers.

 

 I have thought of trying to do a "loose" scale version of the 1F myself starting with a Hornby Jinty and seeing yours has encouraged me to maybe give it a go some time.

 

  Keep up the good work and keep the updates coming.

 

   Steve

[RAWRlab]

On 11/02/2020 at 18:50, Londontram said:

Very much enjoying this thread its my sort of modelling. With the Atlantic could you not ad pickups to the front bogie? 

 A small bit of copper clad some nickle silver wire and some very fine flexible wire all available on the web. I've done this on a few bogies like this in the past and I know other on here have too.

 It's worth giving it a try and might be the answer to the problem.

 It might be possible to swap the bogie for one already fitted with pick ups there's plenty coming up all the time on the auction  site or available from one of the parts suppliers.

 

 I have thought of trying to do a "loose" scale version of the 1F myself starting with a Hornby Jinty and seeing yours has encouraged me to maybe give it a go some time.

 

  Keep up the good work and keep the updates coming.

 

   Steve

 

Thanks for the kind words Steve. I've looked into re-doing the existing pickups (given that I thought they were intersecting with the wheels and stopping them rolling, only to discover that it was the piston rod intersecting with the coupling rods due to a bend, plus dodgy quartering which caused the stoppages) , so I've got a fair idea about how I'd do it using brass or nickel strips and wire like you're suggesting. I hadn't considered it on the front bogie, and its a great idea. I just hope that it doesn't provide so much resistance that the wheels stop rolling consistently. 

 

If you wanted a Jinty as well for your 1F, I've inherited a spare loco from a gifted "Royal Mail trainset" which works dubiously. There's some strange cause of friction which stops the thing from rolling. It's not the quartering, or the bearings, or the connecting rods. It's a mystery, but you're welcome to have it. 

Onwards and upwards, I've been looking through my existing wagon stock after them sitting relatively dormant for a few years. Got out the box of couplings and decided to exhaust my supply of kadees. On the wagons I'd already fitted them to, I'd found that the NEM pockets left the couplers consistently hanging too low, so from now on I'm likely to use the Kadee #141 long-shank underset couplers to achieve the correct height, and saw off the NEM pocket attachments. 

 

What I found also, was that I'd created one or two 'conversion' wagons, with both a tension lock and a kadee, and a many wagons with only kadees (including all brake vans). I decided that now I wanted to have sets of two or three wagons in a rake with a kadee on either end, so that goods trains can be broken up into smaller wagon sets and shuffled around. This means that I redistributed my existing kadee couplers amongst wagons, to create mainly 'conversion' wagons to abut either end of these rakes.  I've demonstrated the principal below. 

 

(From left to right we've got Kadee #5, #141, an already broken #20 glued on using styrene strips for correct height, and #18 using the existing NEM socket).

 

I also had my hand at some weathering. I used some artist pastels I had to draw / distribute black dust onto the wagons, and a paint brush to set it in to the cracks. For mud effects, I crushed up a variety of pastels and added water to create makeshift paint. I sprayed with Tamiya flat coat, and it seemed to dull the effect, which is a little annoying. It did successfully dull-down the wagons, though. 

 

 

Also here's Thomas with kadees. Conversion complete!

 

Next up: 

 - buy some more kadees, apply to more stock. At some point, after steady investment into kadees and shoddy attachment techniques, all tension lock couplings will be phased out. 

- Repaint buffers. I experimented with Percy's buffers to create a steel colour with a dab of black grease. It looks really nice, so it's going on all of my locomotives. 

- Touch up the Atlantic's paint. I'm going to attempt the lining after a successful trial on Percy. I will also paint either the dome or the safety valve in brass, plus touch up the buffers as described. 

 

Edited February 12, 2020 by RAWRlab
deleted erroneous picture.

[Londontram]

RAWRlab I've sent you a PM

  Steve

[LNWR18901910]

On 10/02/2020 at 02:05, RAWRlab said:

Thanks Justang! I’ll be lining the Atlantic again soon, so keep posted. Appreciate the love. 

 

Hi LNWR18901910 you’d be disappointed to know that the Atlantic doesn’t run that well at all :P. The traction tyres on the tender actually prevent the pickups there from working, so it’s only picking up from 2 axles. Not ideal. Also have to fix the wheel quartering sometime soon. 

 

 And the 1F i’m not actually sure of its origins, as I bought it at a country train fair when I was 11. Your assessment seems good, although i’m inclined to say that it feels late 80’s. 

 

Thanks for joining the thread

Your welcome. I'm planning on a freelance Mogul seeing as your Atlantic is freelance.

 

The 1F does have a late-1980s feel to it, so using Hornby's Margate/China Jinty is an option.

[RAWRlab]

Another week, another update. 

I jumped straight in to painting on the Atlantic, had to spruce it up after turning it blank-slate. 

So I had a look at a few cab interiors. To fix what I had, I painted the floor and lever black, and picked out some brass/gold pipes and valves, plus some white for dials. Also visible is the new gold safety valve peeking over the cab. I also painted the tender's inside face black, with exception to the side-walls. 

 

With  the lining working great on Percy, I thought I'd give my new technique and masking tape a spin here. 

Aaaaaaand yeah, she looks good. 

So given the success of this lining technique, I expanded the effort to throw it all over the rest of the loco

And here's a shot of the progress. Still have to do the curved lines on the splashers, and on the corners of the tender. I'm scared of that, but we'll see what I come up with. I will also line the cab, but I'm not sure in what pattern just yet. There are some present leakages to clear up, and I'll do it all at once so that I only have to mix up the maroon colour once. 

[Skinnylinny]

I love the Atlantic - she's a real beauty! For lining the splashers and other curves, what I tend to do is paint the line on over-thick, then use the main body colour and a very fine paintbrush to carefully narrow the line from each side. Often I'll overdo that, and I'll have to go put more lining paint on, then body colour. This can take a while, so I tend to do it with acrylic paint - that way I don't have to wait a day to correct a slip-up! With a fair bit of patience, a passable result can be got.

As an example, the straight lining on this is transfers, but all the curves are hand-painted:



Once you get confident with that, you can do it with 2- or even 3-colour lining, but be warned, the patience levels needed go up exponentially! 



One of these days I really must go about learning to use the proper tool for the job - the bow pen.

[RAWRlab]

That certainly is a good help Skinnylinny, thanks for suggesting it! I hope I have a steady enough hand to apply lining like that - and you’ve achieved such a smooth arc too. I’ll have to have a practice on something before I go in for the Real thing.

[Skinnylinny]

Practice is always helpful! I find that taking it slowly but trying to do the touching-in in one smooth, continuous motion tends to get a better finish than lots of short sections. The models there are the result of several evenings just doing the curved bits with repeated "oops, overdid the lining" "Oh no, now I've blobbed body colour over the lining" and occasional swearing. I think it was worth the hassle though. Lining transfers for the straight bits really speed up the process!

 

I've also seen some people use wide painter's masking tape, with the shape to be lined drawn out in pencil then cut out with a scalpel. You can then put the masking tape on the model and be sure you're happy with the shape before you apply any paint. Depending on the curve, you might be able to use a compass to draw out the arc.