Painting

I mentioned before that my painting technique needs work: look at the state of my first attempted milk wagon if you don't believe me. Now I've built a second milk wagon and a 517 class tank engine (earlier posts), so it's time to see if I can do any better.

I started this time by undercoating the whole of both models rougly using a Humbrol black aerosol. Amazingly, I've never used one before (apart from at the legendary "cosmic wheelbarrow" party when I was 18, where we re-painted a friend's wheelbarrow - blue with white cloudbursts and go-faster stripes - and the inside of his garage door). I was amazed at how easy and fast it was, and what a nice even covering it gave - I guess that's the point! The only glitch was at the front, where I held the can too close to the smokebox.


Next I painted over the tanks in green. Very nice! I had to stop before I'd done much more, but next time I had the chance I gave the tanks a second coat, painted all the black bits (smokebox, frames), the rest of the green (boiler etc), brass dome, chimney cap and valve covering, and red buffers. Alas, the effect wasn't quite so good at this point.


So last weekend I rubbed down all the bits with obvious paint drips with sandpaper - just enough to get rid of the drips and rough the surface up slightly. Then I gave those bits a delicate re-coating of paint. It's looking very nice now! It also has a slightly weathered look due to the sandpaper :) I'm currently undecided whether to leave it like that or add a little more paint to cover up the worst of the scratches.


As for the milk wagon, that was a much easier job: brown all over, except black for the brake gear and white for the brake handles (not yet done). The chassis needed two coats, but I hadn't sprayed it first. The body, chassis, and roof are still not attached, but it's nearly there now!