See where I am? HOe to O without gear changes. First thing in the morning and outside in the standard lock down attire of dressing gown, leopard skin thong and beret with the Halfords rattle cans. Two to be precise. A bit of Nevard-ing in the early sunshine with some camouflage brown base coat and a waft of grey primer. Leave the boards out in the sun to bake for an hour and inside to be attacked with the track rubber. I have a niggle that with the current situation this layout won't actually see the light of day, but I travel hopefully. Warley or... well sit at home again I suppose.
Don't wait an hour, carve a chisel shape in a lolly stick or wooden chip fork and you'll get most of the paint off while it's still soft. Of course I don't work for a purveyor of track rubbers... ;-)
ReplyDeleteMe neither. I'll work for anyone.
DeleteI've also got a tin of camouflage brown...hoping to get the 009 layout to the stage where I can use it in the next few days...really just the wiring to do. At some point I'll buy the other colours as well so I can paint the East German motorcycle...it might motivate me to get the thing back on the road.
ReplyDeletePresumably the leopard skin thong is the PPE alluded to yesterday?
Stig.
It is a strange and annoying fact of life that Messrs Halfords paint in spray cans is not specifically designed for the use of railway modellers. Au contraire it is meant for use on the bodywork of motor vehicles the majority of which are for the most part made of metal.
ReplyDeleteBack in the last century when I built my “St Pierre” layout I contemplated the trackwork inset in a road surface of DAS modelling clay. I decided the whole thing would benefit from a base coat of grey paint and so engaged in delicate brush strokes applying the contents of a couple of pots of Tamiya’s finest. This took some time.
A few years later I was faced with a similar task when building “Sutton Wharf”. A voice in my head suggested I make it easy for myself this time round. I duly took the baseboard with inset track and DAS roadway into the open air and in a matter of minutes the task was done using Halfords grey Primer. I waited less than an hour and then set to removing the paint from the track railhead.
During this process two things happened.
[1] I discovered the inconvenient truth that the paint was intended for use on metal, and that the rail (Peco) being same it stuck to it like fury.
[2] It was damned hard work and I cursed myself for my folly.
When, with some effort, I had cleaned the rail (glass fibre stick) I learnt something else – that effective electrical pick up does not simply depend on the top of the rail. The result was that I then repeated the paint removal process concentrating on the inner shoulder of the railhead.
Christopher Payne