PETE'S MODEL PAINTSHOP

[N15class]

Well I thought I would start a thread to show, my way of painting 7mm models, and hopefully pick up some tips from others to improve my work.

 

The first subject is a hall class I have been rebuilding.

 

I always start by cleaning with a scouring powder like Vim. I then give it a good scrub with a cheap washing up liquid, followed by a scrub with Viacal. They are then left to dry which here does not take long. I do have to pick the right days for painting as the humidy a lot of the time is in the 80% plus mark. Early mornings are normally the best, as it tends to rain most afternoons.

 

Well half way through writing I find I do not have photos of the body in primer, so just for show I have the chassis which is coated in acid 8.

 

The next pictures are of the boiler and the footplate, cab units finished in satin black. These are seperate parts as I find it easier for lining and for spraying different colours.

 

This hall will be in BR lined black livery as it was in the first few years of it's life.

[Theakerr]

Looks nice.  FYI I use pipe cleaners in my wheel bearing bushing.  Keeps them nice and clean.

[N15class]

Looks nice.  FYI I use pipe cleaners in my wheel bearing bushing.  Keeps them nice and clean.

I used to block them for painting too. These day i just run a reem through them now. It cleans them nicely ready for running in.

[N15class]

I always start the lining by doing the boiler bands. This is mainly to get the feel of the pen again, and they can easily be replaced if I get it wrong.

 

The way I do them is as follows. I do them this way even if there is no lining, and just need to be painted. I think they look better than brass ones.

 

Following is my method, that seems to work for me, I hope it is of interest to you all, I have used it in both 7mm and 4mm scales with equal success.

 

First job is to get a length of magic tape, longer than need. Stuck down on a piece of glass, nice and easy to clean and also flate. Not having a piece of glass since I moved here the bottom of a plastic box has to do. I give it a very light sand with wet and dry, if I remember I spay it at the same time as I am doing the loco. This time I forgot so it was out with the paint brush.

 

I then mark off 1mm spaces across the width of the tape as a guide.

 

These are my pens the larger one is a Haff one the other I do not know, but it is this one I like and prefer to use. Maybe I have not honed the Haff pe well enough.

 

Here are 2 pairs of lines drawn, all I need to now is fill the whole width with lines.

 

Not a very good photo of how I draw the lines, the pen is normally more vertical than this, but it was the best I could get wielding the DSLR in the other hand.

 

Finally you will see I have almost filled the tape. There is a gap in the middle as the start of the second line when wrong, this and the one on the left will be for the band against the smoke box, as this will only have one line but will need to be the same width as the others.

 

These will be set aside for the next day or two. then out of the seven double lines and the two single ones I will cut out  the best, and they will be added to the loco.

 

I like to do them this way as it is easier to line on the flat rather than on the loco, I find magic tape works very well, and I get on better with it than home made transfer paper, which I can never seem to get to stick on the loco.

[georgeT]

Hell Peter,  Good to see your thread, with my K Class l fitted the brass strips for the boiler bands and it all looked nice when painted, but the transfers looked awful and l could not get them to look right, so l am removing the brass bands and going to repaint the loco without the bands on, and hopefully follow your method for the boiler bands ?

 

George..

[N15class]

Hell Peter,  Good to see your thread, with my K Class l fitted the brass strips for the boiler bands and it all looked nice when painted, but the transfers looked awful and l could not get them to look right, so l am removing the brass bands and going to repaint the loco without the bands on, and hopefully follow your method for the boiler bands ?

 

George..

Hi George

It is worth doing. Even if the loco is unlined I do the dands in MagicTape in plain colour. I have had no trouble with them lifting once all have been varnished. I think your K looks really good now you have the Maunsell cab.

[N15class]

Well I have gone back to the painting of the hall. I got side tracked making another loco.

 

 

Right the paint has had plenty of time to cure properly so we should have no problems with it. I drew a couple of test lines that I was quite happy with one to check the pen and one to check my work out. I do not do enough to just start with out practice.

 

Lets start with the boiler bands. I carefully cut down either side of the lines I drew last time. If they are too wide you can always cut through the lining line to reduce them. I have includes a photo showing a peice of excess lining to show how it looks when cut. The next is the showing the boiler with a couple added.

 

 

After doing the boiler bands I went onto the footplate cab unit.

 

I start off by marking out the corners etc in pencil, first trying the pencil under the footplate just to check that it will erase without damage. The next job in the way I do it is to do the cream lines first. Then the grey can be drawn slightly over the cream to thin it down.

Here is the work so far on the footplate etc. Red will come when the cream and grey are complete. There is still some tidying up to do, especially on the splashers.

 

 

I started the tender too.

Again marking out where the lines will go. I also made a little template for the top two corners. I have only done the cream here so far, the grey will be tomorrows job. The photo of the template also shows the left over boiler bands

 

 

Finally the name plates etc have been paint so that they will have plenty of time to cure. I am hoping the smoke box number will have the black done then wiped off of the white numerals.

 

[N15class]

I thought I would go through my cleaning process prior to adding any of the paint.

 

I always start off by giving the model a good scrub with a tooth brush and vim, or whatever abrasive scouring powder you prefer. This not only gets the model clean it also finds any parts not securely fixed. After the scrubbing it is a good rinse under running water.

 

 

I then like to scrub the whole thing in Viacal. Which I have to get in from the UK, there does not seem to be a limestone problem here. I always wear surgical gloves whilst I am cleaning just to make sure we do not end fingerprints.  After this second clean I give another good wash off with water, in the UK I used hot to aid the drying, here we do not have any hot water. I put the parts away in a box to dry. Which here if the sun is shining is about 15 minutes. If it is ranning about 20 minutes. As you can see the Viacal turns whitemetal and solder darker. The extra parts are to a LMS 3130 class, that I also have on the go.

 

 

After it has all dried I like to use metal black on all the edges that are likely to have paint wear. so no shiny bits shine through chips etc. I used to do the whole thing but now I have to be a bit conservative as these products take forever to get here when I need more.

[ad1968]

Beautiful work sir.

 

Best wishes 

 

And.

[N15class]

Here we are with the end of the lining on the Hall. I thought I had actually finished but the photos showed up one or more bits that needed tidying up some more. Which has been done but not photographed. I will be adding the transfers next. I have to cut out the name and numberplates ready for attaching.

 

We start with the tender wich I am quite happy with the way it is coming out. You will see I still need to erase the pencil on this, Quite why I only did one side and photo'ed the other side?

 

 

The next one is of cab and a couple splashers, with this I noticed the the splashers needed more work.

 

The cylinders where next, and the wheels rims were recoated too. I sometimes use my boiler band transfers but these had rivets, and the magic tape will not go down on rivet detail, so I did them by hand.

 

An extra one just showing cab and tender next to each other.

 

Finally I have made a start with the painting of the crew for the Well Tank. After priming I coated them in matt black. I have dry brushed off white on the flesh parts and on the drivers shirt. The next part was a blue on the jacket, This was mixed with black, to darken it up a little. I will put extra lightening coats on later. I have to use a mixture of gloss, satin and matt, but I am sure when done done and coated in matt varnish all will be well. Only got a phot of the fireman the sun over exposed the picture of the driver.

[N15class]

The next part of the painting process is to add the transfers and name plates etc. I have still to add the smokebox number then we can give the whole thing a coat of satin varnish. The brass plates are from Diane Carney. The early emblems are from HMRS they are pressfix ones.

I am hoping to get the beastie varnished tomorrow. It will be nice to get it back into one piece.

 

 

 

I have also been adding some paint detail to the backhead. I used dirty white on the gauges and and the water gauge. I then use a pencil to do the actual gauge and needles, I find it so much more controllerable than a paint brush. Still some more work to do to get it looking right. I will also probably scrap some paint off to get some copper showing.

 

 

I am still working on the driver and fireman for the Beattie 0298.

 

The result so far is quite pleasing. There is I feel a lot more to do on them. They tend to look a little patchy in the oversized photo. But they do show where you need to improve. Both with the figures and the loco. I may well stop taking photos, all I seem to be able to see is the errors.

The firemans posture will look better once he has his shovel in hand. I will make a brass one the whitemetal ones look too heavy.

 

 

[N15class]

Whilst I had the airbrush out to varnish the Hall. I gave the Beattie 0298 a blast of black satin.

 

I am pleased with the way it looks. I just need to decide whether to line it out. I know that for the time period I model it will be wrong, but damn it it is my railway and I do not care, it just looks good lined.

 

 

I have got some weeks before I have to decide about the lining as I am waiting for transfers to arrive from the UK

[N15class]

Here we are with what I think are finished, The crew for the Beattie 0298.

They started black, and the blue uniforms were given several coats of ever lightened blue, until I was happy with the way they look. I did the same with the other colours too starting dark and working down to lighter.

 

The flesh colour I use is mixed from cream grey and brown. I dislike flesh paint as I think it is to pink, I much prefer to mix a light greyish brown colour. to me this resembles the British pallid flesh, more than a pinky shade.

 

Well here are the pictures, I welcome any criticism and suggestions as these are the people I have painted for years. The fire man seems to be doing an impression of Charles Atlas, maybe will look better when given his shovel back.

[PAD]

Very nice work and some interesting tips. I like your idea of chemically blacking areas that are prone to chipping. I guess that would be useful on green locos also(GWR/BR)as a small blackened area where the paint has chipped would be much less obvious than a small brass one. Not sure if it would be any good for the brighter railway colour - Garter Blue, Apple Green, Crimson Lake etc.

[N15class]

Very nice work and some interesting tips. I like your idea of chemically blacking areas that are prone to chipping. I guess that would be useful on green locos also(GWR/BR)as a small blackened area where the paint has chipped would be much less obvious than a small brass one. Not sure if it would be any good for the brighter railway colour - Garter Blue, Apple Green, Crimson Lake etc.

Thanks for the nice comments.

I have yet to do one of the brighter colours since 9 started blackening. But I think it would probably be ok. The risky bits like edge of footplate, steps, roof gutter etc are normaly black.

[N15class]

Here we go with some wagons, I have not built any for a few years. It is almost like learning again.

 

They were all cleaned and primed in the usual way for me. What we have is a Parkside SR open, an etched Dragon LSWR machinery truck, and an etched Haywoods MR refrigerator van. There was GSWR batten wagon, but that will be shown elsewhere.

 

I started by preparing the SR brown and LMS grey in two seperate pots for the air brush. Saves time and paint dring in the airbrush.

 

First off was the GSWR wagon, I then added a tiny bit of black for the MR refrigerator van as this will be in MR livery and I wanted slightly aged paint.

 

 

The machinery truck only needed the buffer beams and side rails painting, I will probably mask up and spray the underframe on this one.

 

 

Next was the SR open this had the body inside and out, solebars, and headstocks all sprayed brown.

 

 

The colours are not as weak as the look, I forgot and took the pictures in sunlight, which here bleaches out the colours. The SR brown is really a nich chocolate colour.

[Jack P]

Fantastic! That Machinery truck looks fantastic, Complicated to build? Might order one!

[N15class]

Thanks jack.

It was a nice kit to do. I complicated it by adding compensation. The hardest bit was the fitting the buffers, how I overcame this in my blog.

[N15class]

This is the first time I have  used powders to weather. I have had these for quite some years, so please do not ask whos they are. I have only four colours but used only tth two out of the jars.

 

I decided to have a trial on 2 recently built Slaters PO wagons. These were finished with matt varnish.

 

I used the grey one all over the body, making sure it went well into the planking groves. I then used the rusty one on the underframe working it in harder in odd places to try and get some variation. The rust was also used on the body iron work just to give a hint of rust coming through.

 

After the application I gave the body planking a good brushing off, avoiding the iron work as much as possible, ( I was using a fairly stiff brush). This I did in a downward motion, which had the effect of making it look like the dirt was washed down by the rain. I also added a very light dusting of grey to the chassis. I may add a little gloss varnish or similar around parts that would be oily.  Axle boxes brake lever pivots etc.

 

Well that was it nothing too fancy. I think the powders work very well on matt varnish, There will be experiments with gloss and satin finished later. I found it much easier than with the airbrush and dry brushing.

 

[DLT]

Excellent informative thread Peter, Thanks very much.

Dave.

[N15class]

Excellent informative thread Peter, Thanks very much.

Dave.

Very glad you have found my musings useful. 

[N15class]

Just to wish you all a Merry Christmas, and a happy and successful 2014 model making.

[N15class]

I thought I would post this here even though it is a part for the trailer third I am building here .

 

It is to show, how I hold a lot of parts when painting. What I have is a brass tube about 5 or 6mm in diameter with a thick wall, with a 8BA nut securely soldered (silver soldering is best) to one end and a 6BA one to the other. This gives you a choice as to the best option for the job in hand.

 

The idea being you secure the rod to the part with using a convenient hole. You can also use a piece of threaded bar in place of the screw if the is a nut solder on the part, like a loco body fixing point.

 

I have used these 6 years for all my painting that can be fitted onto them. You can support even quite heavy loco bodies on them, once you know the nuts are secure. Not managed a coach body on them but O gauge coaches are a bit long.

 

You could, if you have access to a lathe use bar and drill and tap instead.

 

 

 

 

 

[N15class]

Here is the job that is on the bench at the moment. You will see its construction on my workshop thread.

 

It was cleaned and primed as I usually do. The first sides have been sprayed with SR olive.

 

 

 

I thought I would paint in a different order to my usual method. I am hoping the masking will be easier and quicker. I normally do the underframe and ends before the roof. But if the ends are not painted the masking does not need to be so well done on the ends. The sides obviously do need to be, but a bit of over spray on the ends would not hurt. My thoughts being it is easier to mask the roof and sides, than it is the sides and ends, but we will see.

 

Here it is masked for the roof painting. Will come back later with the results.

[N15class]

The painting of the roof was very successful. It came out better than I expected. Just needs to paint the vents etc black.

 

 

 

I think I like this order of painting, the masking of the van for painting the underframe was so much easier. I will try a few more when the time comes.

 

All ready for painting.