A_S

Hi all I thought i had asked this before but I checked through my posts and I couldnt see anything. Just looking forr some advice on what people prime etch and brass with? I'd previously used Halfords car primer when painting 1/32 scale brass steam locos, without problem, 10 years on the paint jobs look perfect. However in my recent efforts to paint photo etch and my own scratch built brass parts for my 1/24 rally cars the primers I'm using keep pealing at the corners often even before i paint, and from touching them or clamping them with buldog clips etc.... I can't work out why the etches seem so hard to paint. I opened my cabinet this evening to check out some shades of silver/grey on my completed models only to find my most recent finished build has suffered the exact problem I describe above. See the corners of the roof vents, these are brass parts painted with zero etch primer. So annoying as there is not much I can do now, and all its been doing is sitting in that cabinet since Oct-20.... no other interference. I've used all of the following - zero paints etch primer (2 part), tamiya - whichever one lists etch and metal as one of the surfaces it can prime, some other 2 part stuff my dad uses to prime 5inch gauge steam locos but all 3 just peal at the corners. My technique has been to slighty key the brass and soak for 10-20 mins in white vinager before drying and applying 3-4 medium coats through the spray or airbrush. Anyone else have similar issues, and how do you get round them? Cheers Andy

progress is slow, but its coming along. ans somethings never change... anyway, i'm just trying to decide what shades to paint the brake disks and calipers. the calipers are a very flat white colour but i cant yet find a white enough flat enough silver. thinking tamiya titanium silver for the discs and the recomended xf-56 metalic grey for the hubs. i also need to paint the photo etch buy ivr had a nightmare with this in the past. both zero etch primer, my dad's brass train primer and tamiya keep pealing at fine edges and dont seam to stick! i am concidering good old halfords car primer as i used this on brass trains in the past but i'm loathed to buy another one after specifically buying zero for this purpose!!! my mood wasn't helped when i opened my cabinet to check out the metalic silver/grey colours on some other models only to find yet another problem with pealing, on the corner of both vents. this was zero paints etch primer on brass. I think I did 3 or 4 coats too. Not overly fixable now... expect another post asking for recomendations soon!

ended up having a bit of a break as i got fed up of trying to get the injection holes filled and the surface smooth, plus the opening up of life and summer coming. picked them up again over the last few days and several hours later (a multiple of 2...) sanding carefully with 600 grit then polishing with 2000 this is as good as i can do i think. if anyone has any other suggestions let me know

progress is a bit slow. I'm struggling to clean up the radiator mounts If anyone has a good way to clean these up let me know. Second go and still look really messy after priming. even my attempts to blend the layers of paint hasn't worked:

a tip I have used on this is to clear coat some gloss/semi gloss varnish once the mask has been applied and then spray your black rubber. The clear coat effectively seals the masking and doesn’t allow the black to bleed through. what do you use to clean up without damaging the clear parts? /thread hijack mode off

Thanks. A bit more progress. sanded and refilled some of the tub. Hopefully for the last time. I've also drilled out the front bulkhead and the 4 circles at the front of the tub, I only noticed they needed to be drilled out while doing some research on the bulkhead. replacement suspension mounts fitted and threaded with 14B bolt. just to re-chrome the arms now and dig out some washers to add to the mounts. Its worked quite well I think. In between doing all that I've started preping the bits needed for the front bulkhead. primed and painted. The alclad dull aluminium, again, not sold yet, looks not a lot better than if I'd have used xf-56 or whatever the tamiya flat aluminum is.

As much as the quality is superb - I can’t get over how quickly it all seems to progress given the level of detail!

a couple of photos the photos don't show off the chroming too well, when zoomed in, they look better in real time. I'm happy for a first attempt anyway. maybe a little grainy by the looks of the photos though... filler didnt quite work on one of the suspension arms, but I decided not to re-do because once the wheel and hub are on, it will be hidden. and the tub after first coat of filler, left it to harden for a few days and I'll sand it next and then probably fill again... not an efficient way of doing it, but I don't think i want to use the superglue method, as i may sand too much of the plastic away.

not a lot of progress to report this week. lots of filling on the body and re-filling those bits above. Re-chrommed most of the front suspension parts, waiting to drill out the other arms. Tried to spray the vallejo again, same problem even at a higher preasure and further away. Just can;t get it right. The only time I can seem to spray it without these water marks is to spray very very misty coats but it doesnt end up in a finish any better than a tamiya x-11 or xf-16 for example. quite bity and sparkly after 4/5 very light coats. unfortunately I've lost a part as well. The spotmodel box I was using to transport my bits has a concealed hole at the tongue and I didn't realise - its only a minor bit of the retaining part that holds the roll hoop in, and will be behind the seat, but thats a pain, I might have to try and re-make it if I can't find it. It could be anywhere by now, as I've been carting those bits round in that box for some 6 months.

Thanks. I'll have a look at the weekend RE the Vallejo and DFV block. Not much progress to report. got some of the bits to be rechromed sprayed in alcalad base gloss black this evening. couple of days driying and I'll test out the chroming process on my scrap sprues on friday and if this goes well apply to all the front suspension and steering column parts over the weekend... ..but I have decided I will drill out the front suspension arms and replace so those will be left till later. Just need to find a decent price 14ba die, failing that it might have to be 12ba but i need to check the nut size in case its too big. my stock of 14ba look ok but need to test against the kit part which is in my parent's garage still. Dug out my old stock of brass and steel rod this afternoon to measure and see if I had any 1.5mm rod, was in the box with this.. 70% complete and been sitting in the box for 6 years since i bought my house and lost my workbench space. should really finish it sometime... these things really are a work of art, starting with a flat pack brass sheet. If this build goes well, I'll finish it next. Not really the medium for a thread here sadly.

I’ve promised myself an MFH once I have completed my current Tyrrell build and once I’ve finished my JLTRT o gauge gwr tank which has been sitting in a cupboard 70% complete for 6 years. So I will follow this with great interest.

here is the compressor and the kit it comes from. No longer use the airbrush but still use the compressor.

no picture yet, unfortunatly I haven't been able to spray tonight. Another kind of Spreying. My Cat had her "op" today and has been a bit of handful since. keeps taking her coller and T-shirt off... so i've had to stay indoors. hopefully can get out tomorrow if she is a bit more settled.

Thinking the compressor can’t hold the pressure accurately enough or the gauge is not accurate enough was my guess!

I think I can see where you are going with this...! There is a bigger heavy duty one I could use as well. not sure it would be more accurate! I'll grab a picture. RE the mouldings - it seems to shrink, I think I've filled this and sanded twice. never seem to get it flush..!

Airbrush is an Iwata eclipse. Compressor is one from amazon, generic band thing. It seems to work ok... distance is about 5-6cm paint already has a ball in there I believe. I shook for 2/3 minutes but will make a note to check the bottom of the bottle tonight. no additives garage was dry and heated with a small fan heater all day prior to my arrival. certainly wasn't cold, I'd take a guess at about 16 deg C but its only an educated guess. I wasn't cold in there. on my work computer but I will add some photos to this post in a bit spoon on the right was sprayed at 2 PSI other 2, left to right were 10 and 15. As you can see, its not gone on too well. No runs at 10 or 2 but a funny watermark like texture. plus some work to clean up the 70s mouldings still. Those injection pin marks are a right pain, as they are hard to access for sanding. Bare in mind the photo magnifies the part aprox 3x!

Good plan - I have a set of reamers that I usually use to create a guide but that would work well too. the main issue is - if I mess it up - it’s going to be an expensive fix! The spare sprue that has been on eBay @ £40 is now gone so that’s no longer an option...! I’ll ponder on it more. I spent tonight in the garage priming all my suspension that needs re-chroming. Initially I only meant to prep a few bits for testing but after having a lightbulb moment on why the re-chroming process decided to prep all the parts I needed to do. Unfortunately being a 70s kit - the priming exposed some further filler work I need to do for some injection mould circles. I had filled them but they are still visible. I never seem to get them right first time. Usually takes 3/4 attempts to fill, prime, fill etc before I can get rid of them - so I’m going wrong somewhere with my technique! the lightbulb moment was realising that the only reason my tutorial (scale modeller Channel on YouTube) painted black and then 2k clear coated BEFORE the chrome was because he was using zero paints and they dry matt. Hence the need to clear coat in this instance. So now I know that I don’t need to clear coat - I’ll get my hands on gloss black Alcalad tomorrow and then it’s only to gloss black and straight on with the chrome without the faf of 2k clear coating and waiting days in between. I also tested the white aluminium with a spot of matt white. Colour looks good. I may spend the weekend trying some other combinations and adding some pale burnt metal in and just testing to get a good formula - but I need some more time for that. one problem I did have was spraying the Vallejo. I’ve had it both with the pale burnt metal and the white aluminium. It comes out the airbrush like nothing I’ve ever seen before. My airbrush is a 0.35mm needle and I can restrict the travel on the needle/apature. So restricting to 1/3 full trigger travel and spraying it at 15 PSI it was like a waterfall. it wasn’t running but was giving a sort of bubbly finish which when drier left what can be described as water marks. It was as if you had washed a car window, a tinted one or the black surround and forgot to leather it down! 10 psi was not much better, 5 was getting there but still not a uniform finish and 2 seemed to give me the control I needed without the nice metallic finish - but one that might suit the DFV. However I will need to find a solution that offers me a bit more control. Spraying at 2psi seems nuts. I spray the zero paints primer and thinned Tamiya at around 15-20 psi with the trigger restricted to a max of half way to give an example of the difference between normal usage and the Vallejo acrylics. I’m on my phone tonight so I can’t upload a photo to one drive and link it. Will do that tomorrow.

The work is imperfect and that’s the beauty of it. Nothing in real life is uniform and that’s why this looks so realistic! If it were perfect and exactly how you imagined it, I.e by its nature of being imperfect, even to how you imagined it adds a level of reality. thanks for the tips will be testing tonight and needed an excuse to make an order from hiroboy! 😛

Just watched the video again and I now realise why he clear coats it. Zero paints all dry Matt. Not sure why he has to 2k clear it though but all the same that would be the reason

i still keep coming back to this. I really want to do it and if spares were plentiful I would, but they are not. How much risk was involved when you did this? I ha d no doubt I could easily saw, drill and ream to correct dia. But ensuring that the car then sat flat is my worry as much as anything else.

Thanks for the tips - don’t assume anything. It’s quite late now so I’ll have a look at those sites tomorrow. regarding your Ebro 003 - it looks a lovely model - but I’ve not seen it up close in person. Something you might be interested in - Indycals do a translucent oil tank. They do them in both 1/12 and 1/20 for both versions of the car (Tamiya and Ebbro as far as I can see). I’ve already purchased one for this build. https://www.indycals.net/parts/f1parts/tyrrellfluidtanks.html I had looked at br motions site but didn’t spot any linkages. I’ll look again. Other option is to scratch build as suggested by Malc above. I will consider both options once I get to finalising the block. Off the shelf as long as cost is reasonable would probably be my preferred - as much in a time saving benefit kind of thing. I stumbled across th best balsa kit site from one of Ron’s posts earlier - it looks like a treasure trove. By just searching for Tyrrell I came across some wet tyres for the p34. I’d have loved to put some wets on it. From memory apart from the race it was a wet weekend (weekend of a champion is a great documentary). Unfortunately on googling the supplier, they don’t come in the right format for an 003. I need ones with the blue ring and ideally raised detail to Match the real thing. despite that I’m lucky to have friends in the Netherlands - so if I do need anything.... I know where to go! spent a bit of time in the garage this evening. Test primed some plastic spoons and forks. 2 reasons. I plan to make a click and collect order from my local model shop tomorrow as they stock Vallejo and try out the block colour. I’ll also get some scrap etch and try out rechroming on those without the step of using a 2k clear coat on top of a gloss black undercoat and then chroming over the top as suggested on the video posted in my thread above. the other reason was to test the zero paints primer. Previously I’d had a bad experience with their ‘filler’ primer which was more like sand paper than paint and required a hell of a lot of work. Not practical with so much rivet detail here. I’m pleased to say it went on more like the Tamiya spray - a nice smooth finish. im itching to start making tangible progress but stuck in that not sure what to do phase - so I keep using ‘testing’ as a reason for procrastination.

Just catching up on this thread. Reading start to finish like a book. I won’t need a bookmark though....! this is really useful info for me. Apologies if this question has been asked/answered later on. I think one mistake I made doing this in my tests was not doing it wet. How wet is wet? Usually paints airbrushed (no experience of AK) are tack dry within about 10 mins - how long do you wait for the shading coat? Bearing in mind it usually takes about 5 mins to flush the airbrush out well and remove the needle, clean the aperture etc and re assemble Edit: also where did your source the springs used to mount the exhaust to the gearbox mounting points? I was thinking of doing the same on my build but didn’t know what size, tension or diameter of spring I would need thanks Andy

Thanks, I might just try that. As per the thread I had tried the pale burnt metal and the dull aluminium but neither seemed to fit the bill, although the pale burnt metal on my test spoon did give a nice finish once i learnt how to get it to spray well out the airbrush. The problem with wanting to test all these colours is the cost, a bottle of tamiya costs about 1.65 at my local shop but a Vallejo is 6.50 so i could test 4x tamiya for the price..!

Thanks for the heads up. I don't think the rest of the PE set needs any drilling, just some soldering perhaps rather than using glue but I've yet to look into it in a lot of detail. The only thing I would perhaps drill would be drilling out the cockpit sides seen above to take some rivits but i am luckly that I do have access to piller drills/milling machines etc. In terms of the sizes its hard to judge until you see things in person and get an idea of scale - I'd guess the size needs to be about 0.5mm or less but like you say i am not sure the effort is worth the benefit as there would be a lot to drill out and fit! I still need to read through your Ferrari build, looking forward to that later. My next steps on the tyrrell, now the garage is getting more appealing (less cold) would be to 1.) Re-chrome some of the suspension parts - I posted a topic here to get some recomendations for chroming workflow/process 2.) prime the body parts pending a final decision on what I do with the suspension, i'm still tempted to drill out 3.) Decide on a colour for the DFV. Most people seem to paint their blocks in a silverish glossy paint but all pictures I see of the DFV fitted the colour is more of a pale white metal colour. I haven't quite found the right colour yet. some discussion was had here

Thanks for the suggestions. I may try doing the chroming without the step of 2k clearcoating as most replies have not included this step in their workflow. The spray does look good, which reminds me of the molotow option. I test sprayed a wheel rim and it does seem to work well but i am not sure how robust it is, certainly painted with the pen it takes a long time to harden