In addition to my airbrushing blog post (You know, the one about things that you can't do and then suddenly it clicks) the following points have now been learnt:
Yellow paint airbrushed onto grey primer = gold and not yellow. It's best to prime with white when using light colours for the top coat.
Thinners isn't paint cleaner and that is now on my 'to do list'. I need to go and buy the correct cleaner for the paints that I use. The problem is I am using so many different kinds of paints. Model car paints, real car paints, and non car paints. Some water based and others not. I have cleaner for my water based paints, and Tamiya thinners works a treat with Tamiya paints; it's the other lot that are causing the problems. Now there's a lot of trial and error going on here, but I am pleased to announce that my current bit of spraying is all done. My mini air compressor is almost silent running, and my large cardboard box spray booth works a treat when resting on top of my donkeys years old workmate.
The spraying job was for 50mm edges for a Scalextric layout that I am building on a 4' by 4' board. The 50mm wide curved edges allow the cars to splay out on the bends. The edges are cut from laminate flooring (which is the same height as the Scalextric track) and smoothed with glass paper. Thereafter each edge was sprayed with Halfords Grey Primer. When dry, I used masking tape to break each piece into 50mm segments from either end and then decided on blue, green, white, yellow, and red colours. The next type of edging that I am modelling is the barriers around the outside curves and inside the tunnels. This barrier will be out of 60mm high strips of hardboard that are sprayed white base coat and then a single colour along each length. Possibly 'change purple' (changes colour with varying light). But that's tomorrow or the next day and today is about today's problems and solutions. The downside for the Scalextric track widening edges, was that the second lot of masking lifted the yellow as if it was plastic. The yellow paint was a water based paint with 'reducer' (like a thinners but also aids drying) added. I decided to re-mask and re-spray the yellow, and this time I used 'low tack' masking tape bought this afternoon. Not that low tack mind you, as it managed to lift bits of the red paint.
Lesson to learn: don't be in a rush and let things dry out properly.
Custom Search
