What would you do?

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

I recently removed the lettering from a Lifelike 0-8-0 using MicroSol and a pencil eraser which caused a noticable difference in the paint sheen. I posted a question about that on this forum and the people who responded said I should just go ahead and spray a gloss coat both to reduce the sheen difference and prepare for decals.

So, that’s what I did, eventually. I spent a great deal of time beforehand masking off surfaces I didn’t want sprayed. Very time-consuming.

My question for this forum is: What would you do? In my case, the engine was black and I wasn’t repainting it, just removing the factory lettering and applying decals for my home road. Since all I wanted to do was spray a gloss-coat, was it really necessary to mask off all of the other surfaces? Would you have bothered? Would you have sprayed the whole engine even though only a fraction really needed it?

I have 40 more black steam engines to do - remove lettering, gloss-coat, decal, flat-coat. Not masking off 9/10ths of each engine would be a big time-saver.

What would you do?

Thanks for your thoughts,

Jeff

2

Jeff. All I did was simply remove lettering and numbers. Renumbered and lettered. Then weathered the items using my wifes old make-up powders she no longer uses. Doing that the powders knocked the sheen off.

Simple and works for me.

David

3

Keep in mind that, although you could do a ‘full coat’ of gloss, you’re likely to want different areas of final coat ‘dullness’ in various places on the result, so some masking (even if with handheld shields of cardboard) might be useful.

One expressed concern is building up the paint thickness, especially on fine or sharp detail. If you have a thick gloss coat, followed by powders to be covered and then heavy ‘loading’ with a dulling agent, the overall effect might be ‘too thick paint’ even if you were careful with the color coats.

4

if i were going to have to do that many engines I would consider getting a glass beader to remove the paint and lettering masking off the areas not needing repainting. Then i would mix various paint samples to determine how to mix a larger volume for painting the engines.