East Barnet Joint Stock - a workbench

[Chas Levin]

I also got out the modelling tray this evening, for the first time in a while. This Slaters NER Birdcage Brake was started late last year but then put on hold during busy times, when I wanted to use every available minute of modelling time on the C2. There's a limit to the very fine paingting work I can do in a day though, so I thought I'd get this out again and see where I'd got to last time. The first couple of photos - from before Christmas - show one of my favourite and most useful gadget, the Coffman Clamp:

 

 

 

 

 

The clamp in the first picture is a smaller one, mainly used for glue jobs; that in the second photo is larger and has heat-resistant pads for use in soldering. Until I got these I found gluing or soldering perpendicular things very trying but they really do take the stress out of it - if you haven't come across them before, they'r'e well worth a look (with the usual disclaimer, I'm just a happy customer: https://www.coffmaneng.com/.

 

Tonight, I inserted top-hat bearings in the axleboxes and had a look at how the wheelsets sit; they're 51L 10-spoke 14mm from Wizard Models, because the only thing that comes in the box from Slater that I really didn't like the look of were the all-plastic wheelsets:

 

 

 

 

 

Having built two brake vans with working lights, I'm trying to stick with that (they look so good running along!) so I'm considering what to install with this one: the choice is between pickups and power from the rails, or another Train Tech AL2 flickering effect module.... Whichever system, the lamp itself will be a DCC concepts LNER red LED lamp.

Edited April 7, 2022 by Chas Levin

[micklner]

Handrails on these from memory are a real pain!!. Strangely I have only built one !! .

 

Good Luck !

[Chas Levin]

2 minutes ago, micklner said:

Handrails on these from memory are a real pain!!. Strangely I have only built one !! .

 

Good Luck !

Thanks Mick! Yes, I'd noticed they might well be. I've already pre-drilled the holes and I figure they can't be much more trying to do than the ones I did on the D&S CLC 5 Ton brake a while back.

I found a useful thing is to have a small pile of pieces of card of the right type (hard, unabsorbent) and of a thickness equal to the spacing out from the vehicle sides of the handrails, so that you can cut pieces to fit underneath the rail spans, in between the ends, to hold the spans at the right distance while the glue goes off (the CLC ones were soldered as it was a brass kit, these will have to be glued of course).

[micklner]

13 minutes ago, Chas Levin said:

Thanks Mick! Yes, I'd noticed they might well be. I've already pre-drilled the holes and I figure they can't be much more trying to do than the ones I did on the D&S CLC 5 Ton brake a while back.

I found a useful thing is to have a small pile of pieces of card of the right type (hard, unabsorbent) and of a thickness equal to the spacing out from the vehicle sides of the handrails, so that you can cut pieces to fit underneath the rail spans, in between the ends, to hold the spans at the right distance while the glue goes off (the CLC ones were soldered as it was a brass kit, these will have to be glued of course).

Exactly plastic, thats the problem !

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, Chas Levin said:

the only thing that comes in the box from Slater that I really didn't like the look of were the all-plastic wheelsets

 

An old kit then, in the red or purple box, not the currently-available issue which comes without wheels. (Speaking of handrails, there's something very wrong with the one in the website photo!)

[Chas Levin]

On 30/01/2022 at 21:56, Compound2632 said:

 

An old kit then, in the red or purple box, not the currently-available issue which comes without wheels. (Speaking of handrails, there's something very wrong with the one in the website photo!)

Actually I think from memory the box was mainly printed in black, but yes, it was I think New Old Stock.

 

Haha - just had a look at the website photo and I think I see the problem!! Unless, of course, the part in front of the door is actually a detachable drop-down safety guard-rail? In 4mm scale it's easy to omit the detail that would make it clear that's what it is - here's my addition of a safety hand-rail to the Airfix LNER van and it could easily be mistaken for a fixed rail:

 

 

 

(The roof gap was because the roof was only perched at that point, to allow further work on the lighting...).

Edited April 7, 2022 by Chas Levin

[Chas Levin]

I've now done all the inner curves on both sides and on the bunker rear:

 

 

 

 

 

And, as mentioned in the last post including photos of this loco, I've also done the outer curves on the tank fronts - quite difficult to do and quite difficult to photograph clearly too:

 

 

 

 

 

I had hoped to have the inner curves on the tank fronts done in the same session today - which would have meant that all the white lining would have been done - but time and tiredness defeated me: I'm enjoying this lining enormously, but it has to be done with a fresh head and a steady hand and I reach a point where I know it's better to stop for the day...

 

In case you're looking at the pairs of inner and outer curves and wondering whether they have curves of slightly differing radii, your eyes are not deceiving you: that is how they were done! I still haven't quite got used to it and I still don't understand the thinking behind it (LNER lining is parallel throughout both straight and curved sections and in my limited experience most other schemes are too, BR, GWR, LMS and so forth) but that's what's called for so that's what I'm doing .

 

As usual, I'm spending so much time studying my work in very bright lighting and under very high magnification, that inconsistencies and inaccuracies appear far more prominent than they should: the overall effect I think is quite pleasing and from normal viewing distance looks good.

Edited April 7, 2022 by Chas Levin

[Chas Levin]

A small milestone reached - all the white lining's now done, with the completion of the side-tank fronts:

 

 

 

 

 

Apologies for the awkward-looking photos - the tank fronts are difficult to photograph and the handrails get in the way of some of the lining, no matter what angle you use!

 

The inner curves were actually easier to paint than the outer ones, as they're not quite so close to the handrail knobs, but cleaning up the excess white 'flare' was very awkward - you can get a cotton bud onto the surface but you can't move it around because of the rails, steps and boiler side - until I discovered these:

 

 

 

On the left is a 'normal' size and shape of bud; in the middle, one with two different ends, both similar sized but one end is pointy; on the right, a very fine tipped one. These are used in the make-up trade apparently and they're real problem solvers! The pointy tip in the middle still has quite a bit of soft cotton wool extending out from the end of the stick, so that 'Mr. Whippy'-shaped end is actually quite soft and deforms easily (good in some situations), whereas the very narrow one has only a small amount of cotton wool wrapped around the (tapered) wooden end, so it's quite hard, whilst still presenting a cotton wool surface - good in other situations! Between the two of them I was able to remove most of the white residue.

 

Here are some pics of the general look of the loco with all the white done:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 7, 2022 by Chas Levin

[Chas Levin]

The centre black lines of the boiler bands are well under way - in fact the only one still to do is the very short one hidden on the other side of the dome:

 

 

 

These have been done using the same Kern compass bow pen as I used for the bands' white lines, though I slimmed down the end of the nickel-silver guide wire to fit a bit more snugly into the angle formed by the boiler surface and the edges of the bands. It's still a bit hairy doing it this way and I'm not sure brushing wouldn't have been easier, but it does deposit a good thick layer. I tried brushing - the section under the boiler, as an experiment - but it's harder to get a thick, even layer and even harder to get edges that look reasonably straight than it is with the pen:

 

 

 

(The white bloom from thinning the side-tanks' white lining has really caught the light in this photo and doesn't look anything like that in real life!).

I'm using Humbrol gloss again for the black (No 21) and it's notieably thinner than their white (though not as thin as Phoenix Precision's Gloss Black) which makes it a delicate balancing act between depositing a wide enough line to fill the gap between the white lines as it settles out, but not depositing so much that it floods; a combination of the width of the pen's blades' gap and the speed at which you move it is needed, followed by a session with the spirit-dampened brush and those little pointed cotton buds I showed a few posts back. I've found that they can also be used, dampened with white spirit, like the brush, to thin lines - or in this case to remove black from the white lines - but of course the cotton wool ends are a pretty blunt instrument compared to the 10/0 brush...

 

Looking at doing the forwardmost and rearmost bands, I realised things didn't look quite right went back through various pictures, only to discover that I'd missed two sections of white lines - one is along the bottom of the cab front, between the two spectacles, running alongside and above the rearmost boiler band:

 

 

 

And the other is at the front, where I'd missed the fact that the frontmost band also has two white lines, like the others:

 

 

 

I think I missed that front one because I'd started off using quite poor quality photos where it wasn't very clearly shown and I'd assumed it was just the one line, immediately behind the black of the smokebox; then I got much clearer photos to work from but failed to spot the extras! Lesson learned: always double-check newly discovered photos with ones you're already working on.

Not a problem here though - I'll add in the missing white lines, once the black has fully hardened.

Edited April 7, 2022 by Chas Levin

[Chas Levin]

Back to the practice brass sheet, the padded ruler and the Haff pen for some practise at inserting straight black lines between pairs of straight white lines:

 

 

 

As described in a previous post, I did the boiler bands using a compass bow pen in order to be able to follow the band edges but because of the rounded shape and the necessity of fitting between the two white lines, I found it exceedingly difficult to deposit accurate lines and I resorted to depositing too much and then cutting back with combination of spirit-moistened cotton buds and brushes... while doing to however, I saw how the black gloss settled and spread out after drawing the lines - not a huge amount, but a little.

I decided to try to do the flat straight lines on the bunker and side tanks by more orthodox means, ruling lines of a width just shy of touching the white each side, so that the paint would settle outwards - sideways - enough to touch the white, which would hopefully restrain it from flowing further.

The white lines you see on the practice panel in the picture are almost all poorer than those I eventually did on the loco, but they were sufficient to test and the idea does work, though it's a very finely balanced thing. If the black is deposited over the edge of the white it'll flow a little further over it without much hesitation, while if too wide a gap is left between the black and the white, the black won't flow enough to fill it and the gap only needs to be about a tenth of a millimeter...

It's not just the width of the line drawn either, it's also how deep it is: predictably, a deep, heavy line - containing a larger quantity of paint - flows a little further than a shallower one. How thick and how deep a line emerges from the pen is governed by a variety of things, including the angle of the pen relative to the surface, the viscosity of the paint, the surface and air temperatures and the speed at which the line is drawn. And whether or not the line has even reasonably straight sides depends on those things too but most of all, it depends on a constant speed and angle being maintained.

Needless to say, the width of the gap between the blades is also pretty important. With this Humbrol black, I've found that setting it to about two-thirds of the line and then moving a little slower than you might expect works well, because the thinner paint flows wider than the gap anyway, so the two-thirds setting allows for the flow.

 

The most practical way I've found so far is to do a couple of practice lines first, then start one on the loco, but viewing it under very good lighting and through the highest magnification available and paying extremely close attention to the first few millimeters. You get used to the rough speed that the paint requires on a particular day so you know where to start, but it's during those first few millimeters that you can see whether you're moving too slowly (so that the line is too wide and riding up over its neighbours) or too fast (so that the line's too narrow). You can then make an immediate adjustment and - hopefully - complete the line at the right width. The first few millimeters then need correcting (either cutting back to take them off the white, or widening to meet it) but the rest of the line settles against the inner edges of the white.

Brilliant. In principle...

In practise of course, I still ended up correcting along much of the length of each line, where small inaccuracies occurred and inevitably I'm not ending up with perfectly straight edges between black and white, parlt because the inner edges of the white lines are often far from straight!

 

One interesting discovery came from trying to widen lines where they were a little too far from the white to meet it after settling. Previously I've tried to fill gaps like that by running the bow pen alongside the first line, into where the gap actually is... which almost always results in too much paint being deposited and flowing up over the neighbouring line or other area.

This time, I tried doing a second pass by drawing the pen directly on top of (and through) the first line, instead of next to it - and that works so much better! Providing you're doing it pretty much immediately after the first pass - so the paint on the model is still fully wet - the additional paint is simply added to the existing line, the two flow together and the consequently rather fuller line flows outwards a tiny amount (also helped by the passing of the pen blades through the line, pushing the paint to the sides) and covers any gaps to the sides. It also seems to stop too much paint being deposited - I think perhaps it's because the pen blades are 'immersed' in the first line, which controls the flow of the second line out of the pen...

 

I've just about finished the rear of the bunker (starting with the least often viewed area seemed wise!) so photos will follow in due course...

Edited April 7, 2022 by Chas Levin

[Adam88]

Did you ever consider using brass rule to print the straight sections of lining?  My father used to do letterpress printing and he could get very good results albeit on card or paper which respond well to the pressure applied by the press.

[Chas Levin]

5 hours ago, Adam88 said:

Did you ever consider using brass rule to print the straight sections of lining?  My father used to do letterpress printing and he could get very good results albeit on card or paper which respond well to the pressure applied by the press.

Hello Adam88, thanks for the suggestion and no, I hadn't considered that. I'll try it out on my practice panel, if I have - or can find - strip brass thin enough that stays straight. I had tried using brass strip and sheet as a spacer to give the 1mm between some of the outside white lines and the tank edges, but ran into difficulties using sufficiently thin brass without it bowing - it needed to be 0.5-0.65 to allow the bow pen to ride the edge at the correct spot.

I think, too, that you may have highlighted in your post the possible problems of the hard surface of brass as opposed to the 'give' and slight absorbency of paper or card... but definitely worth a try.

Actually, much of the time, it's not the painting of the initial line that's the problem - I've got quite good with the pen now - it's the way the paint settles on what I'd be the first to admit is not a really glass-like paint surface, producing tiny imperfections in what should be a straight line, and the consequent need to correct those imperfections. By the end of that process, the edges of the lines look slight wavy in places - we're talking small scale and not too obvious from normal viewing distance but it does affect the look of it. I suspect that similar corrections might still need doing along the edges of lines printed with brass strip, especially as you wuldn't be able to see how the paint was landing and/or spreading until you lifted the printing strip away...

Has anyone else tried this method on painted brass surfaces?

[Chas Levin]

Yesterday I completed the black lining on the rear of the bunker that I'd started on Sunday - fiddly of course, because of the various obstructions and I was glad I decided to start with the lest prominent face of the loco because it took a while to get into my stride. As was the case with the boiler bands, I deposited too much black and had to cut it back, with the consequent dulling of some of the white; I'll touch it in where possible on here and on the boiler once the black has fully gone off. Overall though, it doesn't look too bad:

 

This morning's pre-breakfast session was taking up getting used to angles of approach, ruler balancing aids and so forth:

 

And here's the end first bunker side done - apologies for the hasty and harshly lit photo but I was quite pleased with how this panel came out and wanted to include a picture with the others. It's quite a bit neater than the rear of the bunker, partly due to the white lines being neater to being with and partly the absence - aside from the step - of obstructions. Also though - and more satisfyingly - my intention of depositing black to just inside the white lines so that as the black settles it moves a fraction to fill the gap between it and the white has worked quite well and I only had to corect a few tiny areas, which is why I got this done more quickly:

 

You can also see in this picture the slight upward curve or lean of the uppermost outer white line's right-hand half. I had planned to ease over that with the dark green, but when I was doing the black today I forgot and followed the line of the white with the black () so I'll need to edge the white a little lower again, over the black, which will allow space for the green to cover the unwanted upward 'extension'... It'll all work out in the end!

Edited April 7, 2022 by Chas Levin

[MikeTrice]

That is looking really good. Well done.

[Chas Levin]

38 minutes ago, MikeTrice said:

That is looking really good. Well done.

Thanks Mike; it is going quite well I think - it actually looks better in real life too, because the combination of my phone camera quality, my poor lighting and focussing and the excessive enlargement blurs things and produces odd distortions. Still, most people have similar issues when they post pictures of their work, so I guess it's a level playing field!

[Rob Pulham]

It looks superb Chaz.

Your patience and well planned progress, is certainly paying off in the quality of the results.

[Chas Levin]

1 minute ago, Rob Pulham said:

It looks superb Chaz.

Your patience and well planned progress, is certainly paying off in the quality of the results.

Thanks Rob; I must admit it does certainly take some patience. Generally I'm finding it very enjoyable, though sometimes I have to make myself plunge in to the next section - bit like diving off the side of the pool, rather than lowering yourself in!

[31A]

That's an incredibly tidy job Chas; as other have said, very well done!

[Florence Locomotive Works]

An amazing job, I reckon that C12 will be one of the finest ever made!

 

 

Douglas

[Chas Levin]

10 hours ago, 31A said:

That's an incredibly tidy job Chas; as other have said, very well done!

Thanks Steve - I'll put up a pic of the other side of the bunker later, that I did early this morning and which I think is even neater - each section gets better as I improve my technique. The other side also took less time...

[Chas Levin]

6 hours ago, Florence Locomotive Works said:

An amazing job, I reckon that C12 will be one of the finest ever made!

 

 

Douglas

Thanks Douglas, high praise indeed! There doesn't seem to be a huge amount of competition actually, in that I've only managed to find a handful of photos of GNR-liveried C12 models; nothing remotely like the number of LNER- or BR-liveried examples. A poster on Tony Wright's "Wright writes" thread put up a picture recently of one painted by Larry Goddard, in response to my posting a progress picture of mine, which certainly sets the bar high!

[Compound2632]

What I don't quite understand is the logic of your sequence of doing the white lines first, then the black between them, and presumably the dark green border last. From the naive comfort of my armchair, I would have thought the reverse sequence would be easier, since only the white lines would have to be perfect. I'm sure you've thought this through very carefully and have good reason for the sequence you are using! Is it this idea of using the white lines as a barrier to the flow of the black paint, or is that something you've discovered along the way?

Edited March 2, 2022 by Compound2632

[Chas Levin]

2 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

What I don't quite understand is the logic of your sequence of doing the white lines first, then the black between them, and presumably the dark green border last. From the naive comfort of my armchair, I would have thought the reverse sequence would be easier, since only the white lines would have to be perfect. I'm sure you've thought this through very carefully and have good reason for the sequence you are using! Is it this idea of using the white lines as a barrier to the flow of the black paint, or is that something you've discovered along the way?

Hello Stephen, good question and it wouldn't have occurred to me to do it this way either, if left to my own devices.

 

I adopted this method because it's what Ian Rathbone recommends in his book ("A Modellers' Handbook of Painting & Lining", Wild Swan 2008, still widely available online). Having previously done nothing more complex than yellow lines on teak carriages but having seen some of Ian's work online, I bought and read his book before starting this build and decided his advice might be a good way to go; if you've never seen his work, have a look at his site and you'll see why I'm so reluctant to praise my own work. Hope it's Ok to post this here - a link to his (mainly) 4mm gallery: http://www.ianrathbonemodelpainting.co.uk/gallery-2---4mm-scale.php. Click on some thumbnails and you'll see what I mean!!

 

Anyway, in the book (on pages 76-7, "Order of Lining", in case anyone wants to read the full section which is absolutely full of extremely useful tips and advice - no connection, just a happy reader!) he advocates doing the most delicate lines of the lightest colour first, partly because of their prominence and partly to give as virgin a surface as possible for delicate lines. He also notes that for groups of lines, the ones nearest the edge should be done first, because the setting out of the lining is always done by measuring in from the edge and all the more inward lines can then be offset from that first one.

Then, across pages 60-61 he looks at "Incurved corners", with excellent photos and brief but comprehensive explanatory captions. He shows an LB&SCR tank - black in between two cream lines - and he starts with the straight cream outer lines (done with a bow pen), he then draws in the curves and explains about cleaning up stray paint marks after a couple of days with a dry cotton bud, taking things up to the point of having the two outer cream (or in my case white) lines complete for each panel.

 

He then says: "You can relax now as putting in the black paint between the lines is not as difficult."

 

I read and re-read that line many times while planning out the lining on this loco and drew comfort from it, because I suspected that I would find it just as difficult as the outer lines, if not more so... but in fact, he's quite right, because essentially you're colouring in between lines, which we all learned to do at school!

 

Subsequently to reading Ian's book, I recently picked up a copy of Steve Barnfield's "Painting and Lining in the Smaller Scales" (No 3 in Irwell Press's "Modelling Railways Illustrated Handbooks" and undated but I should guess it's 1990s) and he does indeed do it the other way around, applying the centre black and then flanking it with white, but I think I'm sold on Ian's method now!

 

Your remark about only the white lines needing to be perfect I must respectfully disagree with, as they all need to be as good as each other, I now believe. For instance, the line of intersection between each black and each neighbouring white line depends for its appearance on both colours being well applied.

 

However, the idea of using the white as a barrier to stop further flow of the black is something for which I would like to take credit as a discovery - at least, although others may have thought of it, I didn't read about it anywhere and thought of it for myself. I got it working even better on the right-hand side of the bunker which I did this morning (I'll put up a photo later) and the removal of the need for much correction leaves the white lines in a much more pristine state. It's a particularly useful trick, given the fact that the Humbrol Gloss Black is persistently thinner than the white, so that if you apply a line that appears at first to be exactly the width of the white-to-white gap - and even edges up over the very edge of the white - it will almost certainly overflow later and need cutting back with the spirit-dampened brush.

Edited March 2, 2022 by Chas Levin

[Compound2632]

Thank you for this detailed reply. I have indeed browsed Ian Rathbone's gallery with awe and wonder! If you are following the advice of such a master with such success, then clearly his methods are to be paid attention to by such bodgers such as I.

 

I take the point about putting the finest lines onto a virgin surface. I can well imagine that brushing on the dark green border, as an unthinking novice might do, would leave a slightly uneven surface just where one would want to put the finest lines.

Edited March 2, 2022 by Compound2632

[Chas Levin]

4 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

Thank you for this detailed reply. I have indeed browsed Ian Rathbone's gallery with awe and wonder! If you are following the advice of such a master with such success, then clearly his methods are to be paid attention to by such bodgers such as I.

Ha - I'm quite sure you would not be correctly described as a bodger!! 

It's certainly quite reassuring to find someone else's recommended methods work well though - it helps build confidence.

At some point, on another project with perhaps less complex paintwork, I shall try doing it the other way round - centre line first - just to see how I find it. I always think you should try things for yourself (where possible).

4 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

I take the point about putting the finest lines onto a virgin surface. I can well imagine that brushing on the dark green border, as an unthinking novice might do, would leave a slightly uneven surface just where one would want to put the finest lines.

Yes, having now gained a little experience applying lines alongside others painted earlier, I'd say Ian's pretty spot on with that point too. Amongst the many things I've learned more about, I continue to be surprised - amazed - at how small a blemish or deviation from the straight or the level our eyes are capable of spotting; the kind of minute deviations in a bow pen line produced by bumping up over a miniscule paint edge and down again are easily visible from even quite close distances.

 

I've also learned that you need to inspect your work very carefully from every possible angle. You may have assumed - as I did - that paint is pretty flat, once applied: not quite! A line applied with a bow pen sits higher than its surroundings and believe it or not, that difference in height is enough to cast a shadow if lit from one side. A tiny shadow, I grant, but enough to obscure the intersection line between two colours, for instance, and temporarily hide a gap between the two. Or, in other cases, there can appear to be a bulge in a line when viewed from one angle that resolves itself as a shadow cast by an upwards bulge and not something that's a problem!