Walthers reefer grab irons

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

Multi question here from a newb. I picked up a two-pack of the GACX wood reefers off e-bay in my Frisco road a couple of months ago. Kadee 148’s I’ve put in. They come with metal grab irons and the points to drill with a #80 drill are nicely laid out both on the cars themselves and in an accompanying diagram. My questions are:

(1) How do you paint them? Yea, I know, spray can or air brush. What I mean is, how do you uniformly get the paint on the irons? Seems to me, a good way to do this would be just to stick the sharp ends in some compliant surface, e.g. cork? Part II: do they need a primer before the primary color?

(2) What color? The Frisco reefers are what my wife describes as a military green. Suspect the grab irons are the same color, but ?different–i.e. black or something different–I don’t have any prototype source/photo for these reefers. If green, what’s the spec. color(suspect Walthers could answer this–haven’t tried them yet).

(3) What adhesive to adhere them to the shell? These grab irons are metal(the dia. of staples, I would say)–so suspect Testor’s liq. or Ambroid wouldn’t work–prob. CA?

Thanks,

Jim

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jbloch, I’ve put hundreds of handrails on the Walthers pasenger cars. For paint I paint them after they are glued on with a brush. Just find a paint color that is close or mix, if its off then weather the reefers, reefers did’nt go through the wash racks much if ever.

As for glueing, I drill the holes and test fit, if they go in with no problems then I get CA glue and put a drop on a toothpick, put a dab on the grabiron ends and insert in the drilled holes. Don’t use too much CA or it fogs the paint and make sure their is none on your fingers.