Best Of New Brass EP-2 assembly & Mod clinic

[peteski]

If it was me, I would have tried to load up a brush with orange paint and run its side along the edge, but it might have a hard time covering the darker paint.

[u18b]

If it was me, I would have tried to load up a brush with orange paint and run its side along the edge, but it might have a hard time covering the darker paint.

My gut tells me that with my skill level...

paint would be uneven
some excess would go over and under the very edge of the sill.

We will see how the decals work.  I'm hoping it won't be a royal pain.

[u18b]

After a couple of hours work, I got four little tiny pieces painted.  LOL.

Time for silver!  The flag holders on the walkway at the nose and the headlights!

Now for the headlights...... hey, remember those tools I made for punching out headlight lenses (way back many pages ago)?


I made two sizes and I' SO glad I marked which was which.
In this case, I want the small one.
They are sharpened brass tubing that matches the size of the headlight.


Stretch out some masking tape on a piece of wood.
Whack the tool with a hobby hammer.



Good.



Now just lift the tape.....



...and apply it to the locomotive Cab.



Now mask the walkways for the flag holders.  I see now I should have gone ahead and done this when it was masked before.  Oh well.



Go paint some silver with the airbrush!

[u18b]

Now comes that fun part where we unmask (unwrap) and see if there is any kind of damage that needs repair.

The A Cab came out almost perfect.  Just a little fleck of silver to remove with an Xacto knife.



B had a little leak.  The masking tape came loose at the bottom just a little bit.  Not too bad, but enough that I need to fix it.



A little careful scraping with the help of an optivisor, and it is better.



Time to do some touch up painting.
Years ago, I bought about 5 very small brushes.
I took a fresh razor blade and removed about 1/4 of the thickness and then trimmed the hairs just a little shorter.
This is for precise work.

I also took another one and removed about 75 percent of the bristles with a razor blade.  That one is for REALLY fine work.
BTW- this photo shows a tiny tiny amount of silver spray at the bottom of the door.  Need to touch that up too.



I touched up the orange at the bottom of the headlight.
I also scraped the paint off of the micro-LED


Oh yikes!  It was only in doing photo editing of the close macro shots (in the shot above) that I now see some silver on the door window.  LOL.  Will have to fix that too.

The masking of the flag holders did not do as well as I would have liked.  I see some red at the base.
Time to touch up.



Oh Rats!  I got a little silver on the walkway floor at about 5 o’clock position on the flag holder.
Now I have to touch up the touch up!



Better.



Now ALL of the parts except the boiler room get a good covering of the hard clear coat.


Whew!  A lot of work for what seems like only a little progress.

The next step will be those side sill decals when I get some more modelling time..

[bbussey]

Prit-Tee-Cool. 

[victor miranda]

snip
Whew!  A lot of work for what seems like only a little progress.
end snip

ummmm
I read here every time a new post arrives.

You are doing good work and even a little progress (your standard not mine)
is quite impressive.

I am not entirely certain I want you to finish
cause I'll miss the eye popping photos and progress reports.

there is no need to hurry this. Do what needs doing.

[u18b]

Thanks Victor.

I could plan on quitting when you get your Atlantic.   

 

[u18b]

Time to start that decal stripe.

First a plan.
My decal stripes are a bit longer than one whole side.



I don't want pieces of decal to overlap since they become slightly different colors at that point.
So I'm thinking I'll trim the decal so that it will terminate at the left corner of that nose grabiron.



I used a Xacto #11 razor and a steel straight edge to cut the stripe.
Dipped it in water (WATER- I've seen people not realize this step before) and waited a few minutes until released.
I painted some water on the sill.
Then laid out the initial placement of the decal.



Notice it is too far left, and not on the edge at the right side.
That's OK.  I'm going to move it.
But I use a paintbrush dipped in water to add some water to the decal.
Never try to move it unless there is plenty of water.



I use the back end of the small paintbrush to nudge and move the decal to where I want it.
Of course, in this application, the top edge of the orange stripe should be even with the top edge of the walkway.
In this case, the clear decal film will rise up over the walkway.



Now in a situation like this one where placement is very precarious, I do something that is very hard.
I wait.

I want the decal to actually dry out a little so that it will stick to the walkway.
I don't always do this.
But when a decal is going to fold over an edge, it can MOVE very easily.
So I definitely want it to stay put.

So I wait.

[u18b]

After several minutes...

I open the bottle of Walthers Solaset. (there are other products).
The main ingredient (besides water) is various alcohols.
It is the alcohols that melt the decal film.

I say this because alcohols are volatile (they evaporate fairly quickly).
So......
--Don't use a really old bottle- throw it out.
--Apply what you need and then close the bottle.  Don't leave it open all the time.


Now, since I REALLY don't want this decal on the very thin edge to move, I'm going to apply the Solvaset only a LITTLE at a time.  Let it pretty well dry so the decal STICKS and then move a little farther.
As I said, this is not how I normally do decals, but I find this works in this kind of delicate situation.

So as you can see from the way the edge of the film had folded over, I only applied a LITTLE Solvaset on the very left edge.



When that spot is pretty dry, then I apply some more solvaset up to about the ladder area in the middle.
The wetness will run along the decal on ahead, so I have to not go too far.
At this point, I know that the jacking pad could be a little trick, so I definitely want to stay behind that.



Before I move much further, I'm adding some plain old water on the right side so I can still move the decal later.



I THOUGHT that bump was a bubble (even with an optivisor, my eyes aren't as good as they once were) but now I think it is a bump in the metal underneath.
Thinking it was a bubble, I did prick it to let the air out.



Now, the decal is adhered and dry from where the light spot is to the left.
I'm checking everything around the jacking pad.



I then applied just a LITTLE Solvaset right at the left side of the jacking pad.
I'll wait while it all settles down.

[u18b]

While the jacking pad is drying, I apply some more down the rest of the length to the left.
As it dries, it is settling down nicely between the sill edge and the water pipe right under it.



I then apply some more Solvaset at the jacking pad and forward to just behind the curve.... but it runs on ahead to the curve.
I don't want to go beyond the curve at this point.
It is VERY tricky at this point because the sill edge is VERY thin (the water pipe stabilized things in the back).



I let that spot THOROUGHLY dry before going to the next step where I will cut the excess decal.
If you pull on a decal while it is mushy from the Solvaset, it will be a disaster.



I rocked my razor blade right in the crook of that grabiron where it meets the walkway.
This cuts the decal.
I can then remove the excess.
I can then apply some more Solvaset.



Ok, here is more of a side view of the finished product (on this very first stripe- lots more to go).










This was definitely better than masking.
It was time consuming, but I think it will look far far better this way.

As I look at that close shot above of the jacking pad, I made a note to self- too much orange showing, go back and touch up black.

[u18b]

That's as far as I got for now.

As I look at these macro shots, it looks like some of the orange got on the water pipe.

That is possible, but I think it is merely a reflection off the gloss coat.

I'll take more shots later.

[u18b]

Time to do the other side.
This is going to be a lot harder since there are more obstructions.



But careful work paid off.









Now I need to work on the front.  The yellow goes all the way across so I'll have to get in between those grabs.




All finished with this side.
Now to do it all over again for the other side.

[Chris333]

OK now this is just nuts 

[peteski]

OK now this is just nuts 

a big +1!
Ron, I often try to take progress photos of my projects, which lengthens my build time quite a bit.  I suspect that on this project you spent more time taking photos than actually working on the model! 

What camera are you using and what type of a setup? I guess this is a subject for a separate thread.

[u18b]

Pete,
You're possibly correct.

Setting up the shot.
Taking the shot
transferring them to my laptop
choosing them (delete about 15%)
editing them: crop, size, and sometimes color/contrast/sharpen etc).
upload to Railimages
write my posts
[dang] edit my misspellings

So yes, that's one reason this goes a bit slowly.

But hopefully it's been helpful.

As to photography, yes, let's not make this a camera thread, but I'll post a response tonight since some people  might be curious.