Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Armstrong Update


armstrong
Originally uploaded by Phil_Parker.
Over the last few days I’ve been working the airbrush among other tools, bringing the Armstrong locomotive to life.

Since spraying the green body colour I picked out the black bits with a paintbrush and Humbrol matt black. I never bother to airbrush this colour if it’s not the main one as it brushes on so well. As long as the paint hasn’t gone off in the tin too badly you will get a superb finish with no brush strokes. If you can get through the skin on top with something less than a chisel this paint is probably usable.

The transfers (Presfix) were applied to the tender – I’ll write this up in a later post as this involved some fun and games.

Nameplates were painted. This caused me some grief as the round centre one below the name is an old GWR crest which took a bit of research. In the end I had to make an educated guess based on slightly later versions. Strangely I don’t seem to have any colour details of this sort of thing, a gap that needs to be filled in my library I feel (anyone got an suggestions ?).

Once this was done I airbrushed Humbrol satin varnish all over the model. This tamed the toy-like finish from the green and brightened the matt black and red buffer beams.

Finally the smokebox has been painted matt black. It’s not gone quite as matt as I’d like but there is a bit of contrast between this and the green boiler.

What’s left ? Well the tender chassis needs finishing and pickups need attaching to this and the driving wheels. All the wheel rims need painting. The tender needs coal and the cab a crew. The nice set of screw couplings will hang from the buffer beams, oh and the buffers need paint. Not much then !

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