Ian_C's workbench - P4 and S7 allsorts

[Ian_C]

Was it really the end of May when I last posted anything? Sometimes life gets in the way, and the workbench gathers dust. I have managed to accomplish something though. I made a whistle to replace the cast item supplied in the kit. Scaled from a Wild Swan drawing, it's bigger than you think. Tiny brass parts and little silver solder, cruelly enlarged here...


Things are slowly moving towards a conclusion. I've got some fresh black etch primer, and I 'm starting to think about painting. I'll be looking for some advice on painting 'BR grey', there's probably a place on WT for that discussion.

 

[Ian_C]

The 8F is gathering dust at the back of the workbench. Needed a break from it. I'll be in the mood again at some point. Thought I'd do a 4mm quickie project. A 1/108 using a Parkside body and a Rumney chassis (B 13) ought to be a quick and simple project. Of course they never are quick and simple. The Parkside body takes minutes. The Rumney chassis somewhat longer, but without any snags. What I hadn't realised when I started was that I didn't have all the parts for the wheels and bearings. My preference these days is for the Exactoscale type parallel axle and bearing (they stay where you park them!). I've been living off a supply of Exactsocale parts for years, but they're running short now, and not enough matching parts to make up a wagon set. In the end I restocked with the current incarnation of the Exactoscale axle/wheels/bearings from the Scalefour Stores. The combination of 4CW104A wheels, 4CW501A axles and 4CW603B 2mmOD bearings matches up perfectly with the Rumney chassis and suspension parts, and avoids the tedious job of trying to find four identical pinpoint bearings and work out the spacing needed to fit them neatly between the axle guards. All goes together nicely and glides smoothly along as only suspension can. Naturally there's a photo...

It's the one on the right of course.

All pretty vanilla stuff. The weight is a rectangle of 1.4mm lead flashing which, when cut to drop into the floor of the wagon, weighs almost exactly 30g, and brings the all up weight to around 45g. You don't notice the lead floor when it's painted. Buffers are from Lanarkshire Models & Supplies. Spring and axle box castings are from goodness knows where. 3 links are from the old Exactoscale stamped hook and drawbar with home made brass wire links. I usually make a coal load when I make the wagon. The load is a block of rigid insulation foam carved to a suitable shape, twin peaks being the fashionable configuration right now obviously. They'll be blacked and coaled with sieved scale coal lumps eventually.

The 24 1/2 tonner on the left was completed a while ago. I rather like it. Just showing off really.

The 8F though. Fall plate to make, and I'll have some work to do to get the Modelu crew to sit and conform naturally to the cab. Sometime soon.

 

[Ian_C]

S'pose that's the power of WT. Having just posted some vaguely intentional waffle about getting round to making the fall plate for the 8F, I've got off my backside and done it.

The kit has a fall plate in two parts; an etched plate profile and an overlay with a chequer plate pattern etched onto it. The idea is (I think) to sandwich a length of wire in a half etched rebate along the back edges and somehow use that as a hinge along with the tiny lugs projecting from the rear of the cab just beneath floor level. Two problems with that; the resulting plate will be way over scale thickness (and you do see the edge), and I can't see how you'd assemble it and make it work. Cartoon light bulb hovering above head, and this is how I made it work.


I elected to use only the chequer plate etch, it's plenty stiff enough on its own.The plate was profiled and curved to an approximation of the prototype and some tiny lengths of brass tube were silver soldered to the under side to sit between the lugs on the back of the cab. The tube was about 1.0mm OD and 0.6mm ID.


You can see the four lugs in this photo. The cab's upside down by the way. Two 0.6mm holes were drilled in the rear plate, red circles mark the spot.


Small rectangles of brass shim were RSU'd into position on the upper surface to represent the prototype hinges. On the prototype the fall plate was actually 2 plates split in the centre. I've left it as one piece for simplicity. The hinges are completed by lengths of 0.4mm phosphor bronze wire.


Some fiddling, and the plate is fitted in position with the wires. 0.4mm wire in 0.6mm holes makes a nice sloppy fit that eliminates any tendency for the hinges to bind.


The bent ends of the wires are sprung into the holes drilled in the cab . Phosphor bronze wire is springy enough to let you get away with that if you choose the length of the bent end carefully. Easy to take a part as well.


This is the plate assembled to the cab, seen from above. It hinges up and down freely under its own weight and will just rest on the tender. Turned out to be easier than I'd feared.

Need to find the finishing off list and see what's left to do.

 

[Ian_C]

There are four hoses that connect the loco to the tender and are to some extent visible in a side view. Two water hoses leading to the injectors, the vacuum hose and a tender steam brake hose. Unusually I'd actually thought this out ahead of time, and left features in the correct location on the back of the chassis beneath the cab that were easy to connect dummy hoses to.


The two water hoses are at the extreme left and right are connected to the lugs and bosses I'd made previously. The vacuum hose is connected with a small turned collar to the end of the vacuum pipe under the cab. The water and vacuum hoses were made from 2.0mm and 1.6mm brass rod respectively. There's a basic representation of the vacuum hose coupling at the bottom of the loop. The profile of the hoses was scaled off one of the Wild Swan drawings and drawn in 7mm size on a scrap of paper. The brass rod was bent gradually until it matched the sketch. Because the hoses are spigotted into flanges they're quite robust when soldered in place. Here's hoping...


This is what you see from the side at about scale eye level. I didn't make a steam brake hose because the electrical wires represent that in roughly the right position. Sort of. What's apparent in this photo is the see through gap where the buffing block and plates should be on the drag beam. I'll have to make something to go there and block the view without restricting the articulation. That's part of the modelling challenge - seeing daylight where there should be daylight, and not seeing daylight where you shouldn't!

Freddy fireman is contemplating the dent in the tender side that's been filled with Isopon. It's 1966 mate, I'm surprised anybody even bothered to fix it. A few more months until withdrawal and the scrap line.

 

[Ian_C]

Nearly, nearly complete. Seemed like time to put it all together for a preview. It's such a performance to assemble it all that I've rarely bothered during the build. It's so long since I've worked on some of it that it took some head scratching to get it all together. Not helped at all by an indisciplined approach to keeping all the loose parts along with spares and misfits in the same container. I mean, what are all those washers and spacers for? I can't imagine where they all go. I had to refer back to some WT posts to figure out the assembly sequence for the tender chassis. There'll need to be a Haynes Manual for this thing, or at least some assembly notes. Needless to say, I found a few small jobs to finish off as I put it together. And having got it together and taken some photos, I can see a few more. For example the clamps for the cladding bands on top of the firebox, and the little collars on the end of the handrails. Here it is, cruelly exposed.








Next I need to give some serious though to painting it. How do you go about painting a loco in grubby BR grey? I'm not sure Halfords grey primer and a coat of satin black gets the desired result.

 

[Ian_C]

The original cunning plan to hinge the cab doors with phosphor bronze strip didn't work out well. The endless faffing connecting the tender drawbar and then disconnecting the tender drawbar was hard on the cab doors flapping around out back of the loco. Eventually one came unsoldered. Rather than refit it, I needed a new approach that allowed them to articulate, kept them lightly sprung closed when coupled to the tender, and allowed them to be removable to work on the loco.

The following photos show how it ended up. The two sections of the door were soldered permanently together. A length of microbore brass tube was soldered to the cab wing plate. Two shorter sections of tube were soldered to the door. This was done with the door held accurately in situ with the short tubes threaded on a 0.5mm wire hinge. The short tubes were then soldered to the doors, being careful not to solder the whole shebang solid. A spring was made by wrapping 0.3mm phosphor bronze wire round a 0.5mm drill bit to form a loop. The spring is retained by the hinge wire passing through the loop. One end of the spring is soldered to the inside of the door, the other is tweaked to bear lightly on the inside of the wing plate. Seems to work, and the whole door can be taken off by removing the hinge wire. Not prototypical in appearance, but it's not too visible and it's robust.



Painting then. Some kind souls have suggested that the model's good enough to be blessed by Martyn Welch. Not sure about that, and not sure I could afford it either. Besides, I'm determined to do as much as possible myself. There's always paint stripper if things go horribly wrong. There's a lot to think about before even starting to paint anything. Here's what's percolating at the moment...

• I'll need somewhere dust free to keep it between painting sessions. Usually I just leave freshly painted models somewhere where they won't be disturbed and there's not much dust. 'Not much dust' = 'some dust', and there's usually remedial work to do. I'm thinking of making a drying box, which will also be useful for other model painting activities.
• I have some fresh Phoenix 2 pack etch primer in black, so that'll be the first coat on most of it.
• 'Proper' primer on top of that, or not? I'm thinking a grey micro filler primer may be needed to show up areas that need some work before the base colour. Also with a mid grey base it'll be possible to do a little zenithal highlighting by varying the density of the base black colour on top of it.
• The other decision at this point is whether to go acrylic or solvent base. I'd prefer the base colour to be solvent based paint to give a more durable surface for weathering effects. Therefore the underlying primer needs to be solvent based as well. May use some of the paints I've used for car modelling. Zero Paints make some excellent paint. They don't do railway colours, but black's black innit?
• Been doing some reading about scale colour. Seems to be a thing in the aircraft modelling world. Makes sense that objects at a distance appear less saturated due to atmospheric haze. Logically therefore the loco isn't going to be absolute black, and I'll experiment with fading it a little with a neutral grey. See, it really is going to be BR grey!
• Decals over that. Cab side numbers, tender emblems BR late, electrification warning flashes. Who makes the thinnest decals I wonder?
• Clear coat over the decals to protect them from the mayhem that follows.
• Then weathering. I will re-read Martyn Welch's book on the subject, but I'm inclined to use some of the military modelling techniques and materials I've picked up.
• Find some decent photos of a loco in the condition I want to portray, and paint what you see.
• At 7mm scale I think texture starts to play a part in the appearance of a model. There'll need to be a way of distinguising the typical scabby smokebox paint from the boiler cladding.
• Ashes and char on the front footplate will need to be represented.
• Spillage around sand box fillers and oil fillers.
• Water streaking down boiler and firebox, both rain water streaks and hard water deposits. And that'll be best done without the handrails in place. So handrails will need to be fitted, painted, and weathered almost at the end.
• The build up of oil and dirt around the valve gear can be visually significant on a filthy loco, so that'll require some subtle texture.
• Road dirt and brake block dust on chassis and wheels. Radial streaking on the wheels and balance weights. In particular the bloom of rust around the front of the cylinders from the mixture of water and steel grind off the pony truck tyres and track.
• Corrosion and build up of coal dust in the tender coal space.
• Coal load in tender. How much? Just off shed or partly empty? Classic hand hewn lump and slab coal, or, more likely, a heap of late BR calorific dross?
• Corrosion and residual water around the tender filler and breathers.
• Buffer beams not bright red! More of a strong faded pink. And of course, no shiny buffers!
• Overall layer of soot, grit, oil and road dust.
• How to capture that yellowy, oil glazed appearance of steel motion? With oil streaks in the right places. I think there's something on this in the Martyn Welch book.

In order not to get lost in this process and to avoid me randomly daubing and sloshing, it'll have to be written out as a plan. Sequence, materials, techniques etc... This is starting to feel like hard work.

 

[Ian_C]

Here's my attempt at making a paint drying box. The objective is to place the painted model in a space where it'll dry without collecting dust. Need to keep dust out, allow air to circulate, and raise the temperature a little to speed up curing of the paint.

1. The device is made from two cheap plastic storage boxes from B&Q. The base here is one box with a heater and a filtered air inlet. The heater is a scrounged electronics enclosure heater. It's 230V and 20W, effectively a wire wound resistor in a metal box. It was rather dusty but was easy to take apart and clean up. I don't know what surface temperature it'll get to, so It's mounted on a rectangle of ply screwed to the base of the box. The flex comes in through a close fitting grommet in the side of the box.
2. There's a hole in the box opposite the heater and that's covered by an air filter. The boxes are labelled as polypropylene, but they're surprisingly brittle for PP. I guess plasticiser costs money, and that's why they're so cheap (about £2.50 each I think!
3. The two lids have most of the top surface cut out, leaving a flange to which a piece of steel mesh is glued to form a drying platform. The lids are then glued together top to top. All of the gluing is done with a clear silicone sealant which seems to be able to stick anything to anything.
4. Same as 3 really!
5. The top is the other box inverted. A hole was made in the top surface and an air filter glued over it. The air filter is a cheap automotive filter (about £5 on Amazon). It was cut in half and used for the base air inlet and the top air exit. I originally thought I'd find a couple of suitable vacuum cleaner filters, but it turns out you can buy a lot more filtration for a lot less money if you choose an automotive air filter. A decent fillet of sealant was smeared around the edge of the filters to make sure there was no sneak past for dusty air.
6. Inside view of the top. You can see the round air exit hole beneath the filter.
7. The drying platform sits on the bottom box.
8. The top sits on the drying platform. The idea is that air is drawn in through the filter in the base, heated and mixed a bit in the lower box, and rises through the mesh and around the painted model. The warm air exits slowly through the filter in the top. Well that's the plan, and physics is generally reliable round here.

A bit Larry Lightbulb, but I think it'll work. First test shows that 20W achieves a temperature inside the box of about 5C above ambient. I probably want a slightly higher temperature than that, but not so high that it'll encourage plastic models to warp. That's one reason why I didn't just use a lightbulb, I don't want radiant heat on the models. One other necessary improvement will be to find some low density foam to make gaskets to properly seal the boxes to the lids. By design there's a small air gap between box and lid that'll let in unfiltered air.

I'd be surprised if something similar hadn't been done before, but I couldn't find anything on google.

 

[Ian_C]

3D printed plates notwithstanding I eventually caved in and ordered a set of plates from Severn Mill Nameplates. Sometimes you get lucky, and the 48142 number plate and the specific tender number plate 9797 were available. What a nice chap Chris Watford is, and what excellent plates they are! Shame he can't find anybody to etch to his standards, so he'll not be producing any more. Get 'em while you can. Better have a think about a Black Five set and a 4F set. The 3D printed plates were scraped off and the etched plates RSU'd on. Here are the tiny information plates on the tender.


Some small pieces of lead were epoxied to the larger flat areas of the tender body. Not to add weight particularly, mostly to prevent them drumming. One in the coal space, the others inside on the sides.


Some blue foam insulation was hacked to shape and epoxied into the coal space. The shape won't be so uniform when the coal's added. Partly used load with a half refill dumped near the front. It's quite interesting studying the shape of coal loads. Not so much of the full and perfectly trimmed load of lump coal in later BR days. More like a few tons of nutty slack piled up under the chute like a little volcano, and left to shake down when under way..


Painting or gluing directly on the blue foam can be a bit of a nightmare, so a shell was laid over it with paper and PVA glue.


After weeks of diversion and procrastination I finally got some paint on the thing. Broken down into parts for cleaning, it's almost a kit again! First a scrub with solvent (IPA or Acetone) with a fine toothbrush to remove any last traces of paste flux and finger oil. Then 4 minutes in a 50C ultrasonic tank to shake loose the remaining crud. Yeah, I know. Paste flux is death to paint etc. I've never found it to be a problem if it's thoroughly cleaned off. Attention to detail, solvent scrub and hot ultrasonic bath seems to shift everything. Has worked OK on 4mm models, so should be OK on 7mm.


Once everything's clean and completely dry it's time for the first paint. I'm using the Phoenix paints 2 part black etch primer through a Iwata TR2 airbrush with 0.5mm nozzle. Phoenix recommends thinning at a ratio of 1 paint to 1 thinners. The paint's quite sticky stuff and I found that it wouldn't spray well at 1:1. A ratio of 1 paint to 1.5 thinners worked well. The conditions were cool and damp, and spraying at about 15 psi enabled a thin wet coat to build and flow out. No attempt to cover with the etch prime coat. Phoenix recommends a layer that you can just see the substrate through, and that's pretty much what I ended up with. To get the paint to spray right, and to get some practice with the TR2 I made up a rough tender body from the spare riveted overlays and some scrap etch.

Here's the first session cooking slowly in the paint drying contraption. I'll cook them for a couple of hours to get he solvent off, then I'l just leave them there for a day or two unheated to harden. The etch primer I put on the practice tender a week ago has taken really well. You can scrape it off with your fingernails, but it's not easy. The primer seems to be doing its job.


The chassis was a painting conundrum. The way I ended up building the chassis means that I can't drop out the axle boxes, so they have to stay in for paint. I didn't fancy the job of un-gumming paint clogged axleboxes so they were masked off for spraying. There will be some touching in with a brush and enamel when the masking's off. Hopefully not too noticeable when weathered and behind the wheels. Next time the axles and axleboxes will be removable!


I should mention that I'm using a P3 A2 filter respirator for solvent scrub and painting. It's a JSP Force 8 respirator / filter that I use now. I have to say it's the best mask I've used so far. The seal to face is excellent. It's comfortable to wear for extended periods. And the A2 filtration works very well. You smell no solvent at all when breathing through the filters. Doesn't cost much for the protection it provides. I still work near the open workshop door, even so.

There's the tender body, some touching in and a few more bits and bobs to etch prime next weekend, then it'll be time for the base coat.

 

[Ian_C]

On to the base coat. I'd sprayed grey micro filler primer over the etch primer on one side of the test tender body, and left the other side just with the etch primer. I sprayed various mixtures of base coat over both sides as I was experimenting with shade and spray settings. I couldn't see any difference between the grey primed and unprimed sides once I'd got a decent base coat on, so I decided to base coat straight over the etch primer on the model.

Starting with the tender, the base coat was built up in about 4 layers, leaving a few minutes between coats for most of the solvent to flash off. Once the last coat is done the model goes into the paint drying box to dry and cure protected from dust ( I have to say the paint drying box contraption is ace, it really does work well). The base coat on the tender wasn't so clever, and once cured you could clearly still see the patches of filler I used to level up the dents I'd put in the tender overlay with the RSU (oh, about a hundred posts ago). I ummed and ahhed about just leaving it and hoping it'd disappear under the weathering. In the end I built up a layer of grey filler primer over the patches and once cured, rubbed it down with micro abrasive pads, bring careful not to break through the etch primer to bare metal. Another layer of base coat finished it off nicely. I've noticed a few small blemishes on the loco as well that I'd missed when it was in the metal. In retrospect I'd probably have been better off with a coat of grey primer over the etch primer to help me find the nasties before applying the base coat.


The black isn't exactly black. I'd done some homework on colour perspective and concluded that I should fade the black a little by adding a small amount of grey. I couldn't find much hard information to go on, but on an aircraft modelling forum I'd seen about 10% suggested for 1/48 scale. A mix of 9 parts black to 1 part neutral grey was applied to the test tender and left to dry. Seen in daylight, it was clearly a dark grey and didn't look quite right to me. Further experiments ended up with a mix of 1 part grey to 20 parts black looking about right. It's subjective to a degree, and it'll be under a coat or two of weathering, but to me absolute black never looks quite right on models. So, it's an 8F in BR Grey. For the record I used Zero Paints Semi Gloss Black ZP-1366 and Zero Paints RAF Light Aircraft Grey ZP-MIL1007. The semi gloss and the matt grey mix leaves a nice satin sheen. Enough gloss to show through where the muck has been wiped off, but not poke you in the eye. If you had both the matt and the gloss base coat blacks you could mix them to get the gloss level you wanted - anything from stretch limo shiny to dead matt.


I couldn't resist putting the main assemblies together to get feel for how it's going to look. The challenge at this stage is to avoid getting oily finger prints on the parts, so it was all put together while wearing latex gloves. You've no idea how much harder that makes everything! Even so, there are marks on the tender sides that'll need to cleaned off before decals are applied.


Here's the crew newly painted and posing for the camera. These chaps are from Modelu, and painted using some very basic figure painting techniques. I find the Modelu figures excellent for proportions and stance (well, they should be if they're scanned from real people!), but lacking in definition compared with most military figures of a similar size. The faces in particular are quite jelly mould featureless and it's hard to get any character into them. You kind of get away with it on the 4mm figures, but not the 7mm. I did look for cast resin replacement heads in this scale, but found nothing. If Mr Modelu ever gets the faces sorted they'll be awesome! Yes, the red boots... They were stuck with blu tack to the top of a paint bottle for painting. Don't worry chaps, I'll black up the size tens before you report for duty.


Amidst the clutter on the bench 48142 is starting to come to life. You can see the smokebox has been sprayed a matt version of the black / grey mix. I know the smokebox started off the same as the rest of the paint on the loco but goes downhill rapidly with heat and exhaust fall out. There are lots of photos of preserved 48151 on the web, and a lot of them are dated. It's instructive to see how long the shiny smoke box on freshly painted 48151 stays shiny. Not very long. You can just make out the matt overspray line one masking tape's width behind the smokebox! I think that'll disappear under the coat of late 60's grime.

Does it look like an 8F? Yes, I think it does.

 

[Ian_C]

Here it is with the decals on. They're Fox waterslide. Not many of them, and easy enough apart from the ******g rivet under the number 1 on the cab side. Couldn't get the thing to conform even with a strong decal softening solution. Had to be poked down with the end of a scalpel and touched in once dry. Next time I'll think this out ahead of time and maybe remove the offending rivet during the build. Couldn't find any rules for number spacing, so that was done by eye and reference to photos. Start with '1' in the centre and work out with about 1.5 times the stroke width between numerals.

Experimented on the spare tender body first and found that the decals went onto the satin grey/black with no trace of silvering. That's good, because it saves spraying a gloss layer under the decals. Electrification flash location varied a little from loco to loco. From available photos and bit of guess work this is where I think they were on 48142 near the end of its life. Flashes on the front and rear tender bulkheads too. Some locos and tenders didn't have a full set of flashes. Maybe it wasn't such a concern if the loco never worked under the overhead. I happen to like the flashes as I think it's a signature item for late BR steam, so 48142's got a full set! In case anybody notes that the BR emblem on the tender is a little to the rear of the centre axle, it's deliberate. Appears that the emblems were positioned to sit centrally between the vertical rows of rivets on riveted tenders, and that carried across to welded tenders too.

Experimenting with decals on the spare tender helped me to find out how vulnerable the decals were to the clearcoat. The thinned clearcoat is quite 'hot' and it doesn't take much of a wet coat to start crinkling up the decals. Once the decals had completely dried out they were given couple of mist coats of Zero satin clearcoat and 10 minutes in the paint drying box before before applying a couple of full satin clearcoats to seal them and protect them from the weathering process. As it turned out I think the greying of the black paint and the satin clearcoat makes for a very good representation of a clean black loco in this scale.

The last panes of cab glass were made from microscope cover slides (method explained in an earlier post), and they'll be fitted before weathering. I've decided to brush paint the buffer beams, and the Humbrol satin red I'm using will need 3 or so coats before it covers adequately. After that it'll be ready for a deep breath before weathering.

Just for fun I had a go at some virtual weathering in Photoshop to see if I can get a feel for how it'll look. This is a couple of minutes with a an airbrushy brush setting. I think there's some potential here. I might do a few studies of areas like the cylinders and smoke box to see what works best.


The Martyn Welch Wild Swan classic, 'The Art of Weathering' will be bedtime reading for a few nights.

 

[Ian_C]

The painting and weathering turns out to be a process that needs to be carried out in several steps, according to some kind of plan, and combined with the final assembly of some parts. So it's taking a while, and so far I've resisted the urge just to throw it all together and sprint to the finish.

The firebox backhead is now paint complete.

It's intended to be a grubby, working cab, kept functional but not polished up. No Brasso on this footplate! To that end, even though the pipework is actually made from copper wire, it's painted a matt red brown to represent the patina you get on unpolished copper. Items that get a lot of use, or are otherwise kept clean, get the dirt rubbed off and a bit of a shine. Gauge markings are painted on, but I might replace them with some CPL photo printed gauges. The fire door is showing some rust due to the heat scorching the paint. The order of painting goes something like this...

1. Cleaned and grey primed by airbrush. I actually used matt grey Humbrol enamel as the primer, but seems to be OK.
2. Airbrush all over with the satin tired black, the same as the loco and tender (Zero paints, previous post). I theory it's not a good idea to spray Zero base coat paint over Humbrol enamel, but a couple of mist coats first, followed by some drying time, allows the Zero paint to go on without problems. Into the paint drying box and bake it for a few hours.
3. Brush painted the details, pipes, handles, gauges etc. Humbrol enamels usually. Add the rust to the fire doors with AK Interactive rust effects. Let it all dry and harden over night.
4. Scrape or rub off all the paint from areas that will get some wear and cleaning, like the hand wheels and sight gauges. They stick out like a sore thumb at this point, but they'll be toned down in the next steps.
5. Light overall mist of the weathering colour ( M. Welch recipe) from the airbrush, and some shading of the pipework. Let it dry for about half an hour, solvent gone but paint not cured.
6. Take a cotton bud moistened with enamel thinners and gently rub off the weathering mix from the items that you want to shine. No need to really shine them up, a thin film of the grime keeps them blended in.
7. Metallic steel (Humbrol Metalcote works fine, but there are loads of alternatives) on regulator handle and a few other parts. 30 minutes drying then polish gently with a dry cotton bud.
8. Finally a little dry brushing with a dirty pale grey acrylic to highlight some edges and rivets etc. Leave it in the paint drying box to fully dry and cure.

Elsewhere, having finally sorted out all the bits and box for axle spacers and crankpins and made some proper assembly notes, a start has been made on weathering the heroically filthy chassis.

I've not found many good colour photos that clearly show the weathering patterns on the chassis, but there's enough to give me some direction. This with the airbrush and the M.Welch weathering formula again. Unlike MW I've not tried to add any talc to the mix to give the paint texture, although I'll probably do that with the wheels.

You may not have noticed, but as part of the Brexit negotiations before Xmas, Euro Santa's terms and conditions changed. The legal definition of "have you been a good boy this year?" has been adjusted to reduce the contractual obligations around present supply. As a result some odd stuff appeared under the Xmas tree this year. Nevertheless it's turned out to be quite useful.

Exciting eh?
Top left - 100 ml laboratory reagent bottles. Handy sized glass bottles with a wide mouth. Graduated in 20ml increments (on the other side). Best thing about them is the top. They have a proper seal, they're large and easy to grip, and there's no child proof cap nonsense going on. This one used for enamel thinners for brush washing, because I like to be able to see the state of the thinners and the paint coming out of the brush when I clean it. Plenty of other uses I'm sure. From eBay Simax Glass Reagent Bottle with pouring cap and ring, £4.50 each, buy more to get them cheaper.

Top right - glass laboratory beakers in 25ml and 10ml sizes. I use them for mixing paint mostly. They have graduations and a pouring spout. Previously I've used small plastic beakers for this, but they're impossible to clean properly and they're essentially disposable. Along with cycling to work and a wooden handled toothbrush, this my contribution to the environment in 2021. eBay again, Borosilicate Glass Laboratory Beakers. Besides, they're just cute little things - don't be surprised if they end up in the kitchen!

Lower - a cheapo paint stirrer. I'd considered paint shakers or stirrers a needless complication for years. Watching a You Tube channel (International Scale Modelling - it's a car modelling channel, but there's plenty of transferrable knowledge) converted me to the cause. I've no idea where this came from , it really was from Santa. Fully mixed paint in seconds, even those tinlets where the pigments sink to the bottom as semi-solid sludge. A quick whizz in the enamel thinners jar and it's clean. Beats stirring away with old screwdrivers or cocktail sticks.

Oh, and since this is my last post in 2020, I'll wish all the WT'ers a happy and peaceful New Year. It couldn't be worse than 2020 surely?

 

[Ian_C]

Martin Welch's advice in his Wild Swan book - 'paint what you see, not what you think you see'. I found some decent colour photos of dirty 8Fs, zoomed in on the wheels and printed them on A4. On thing's apparent from studying photos of late BR steam locos, if they're not cleaned for any period the driving wheels accumulate an unholy mixture of road dirt, brake dust and splashed oil. There's a definite thickness and texture to it, and usually a radial streaking pattern. This time I did mix some talc into the paint per MW.


All looking plain and black, but you can see what'a coming next...


The radial streaking has to be truly radial if it's not to give the game away. To help with that I knocked together a little painting aid. There's a hole in the base for the axle, and the painting guide is screwed down tight enough to stay where it's put. The guide can be adjusted to offset the thickness of the paint brush handle so the brush tip follows a radial path from the axle's centre.


There's a bit of hand and eye involved too, but it's easy enough. Picture, 1,000 words etc...


The paint is the standard MW weathering mix of Humbrol enamels with some talc sprinkled on and worked in. The radial pattern is put in with the tip of a brush before the mixture gets too stiff. Just rotate the wheel a little, place the tip of the brush at the axle centre and follow the guide out past the rim. Looks quite dramatic here in close up, but the texture 'sits down' a bit once the solvent has evaporated. Some restraint needed, it would be easy to overdo it. Once they're all done they get baked in the paint drying box for a couple of hours.


Using the airbrush there's a dusting of orangey brown road and brake dust around the rim and part way up the spokes. The tyres and rims get a very faint mist of matt orange to represent the iron brake dust that accumulates more heavily there. To get the slightly oily look I dry brushed around with AK Interactive Aircraft Engine Oil. Well, you can't actually dry brush with this stuff, but if you drag a moistened brush over the wheel it leaves shiny highlights on the edges and the texture. A bit more engine oil was applied around the crankpin, on the two short spokes and on the adjacent rim - seeping connecting rod oil.

 

[Ian_C]

Back to work on Monday. Need to press on, there's still plenty to do...

Those two again, checking out the office.



Need a slight touch of black on the rims adjacent to the crankpins where the oil seems to darken the crud.

 

[Ian_C]

Funny, isn't it? How you can spend ages looking at things and think you're thoroughly familiar with them. Then you look again and notice things that had previously escaped your attention. And so it is that I've had to make and fit some parts halfway through painting.

On the tender I missed the funny little spring keep bracket thingys. I knew they existed, but somehow missed them when I was doing the spring and axle box 3D printed parts. They were made up from brass strip and fixed to the painted tender chassis with the adhesive of last resort, medium viscosity cyano. Of course the adhesive is only as good as the paint beneath it now. Here's hoping.


The other thing I'd noted way back, then neglected, was the boiler feed pipework beneath the running plate. On the pipe drawing it's shown tucked neatly out of the way up behind the valence. Seems to have drifted a bit lower on most locos later in their life, to the extent that you can see some of it peeping out from beneath the valence. Also when looking back towards the cab it does show up inside the curve of the cab front. Just to add faff to the job there are pipe clips along the length that need to be represented. Again, it's too late to solder to the running plate now, so some small pads were added to get the height right, and they will be epoxied to the running plate. Have to be careful to clear various bits & bobs on the chassis. Then I'll mask off and spray the new parts. It'll be mostly lost in the murk and crud, but it's there. Photo makes it clear...


Weathering's part way done. A coat of basic grot has been applied to loco and tender body, and cleaned back in some places, like cab side numbers and patches where the crew have rubbed up against it. Some streaking has been added with cotton bud and enamel thinners on boiler and tender sides. There's still plenty to do, and it looks a bit half baked right now, so no photos today. One thing worth noting about the Martyn Welch weathering formula that uses Humbrol Metalcote, it doesn't play nicely with small airbrush nozzles. The Metalcote particles will eventually clog a 0.3mm nozzle. Then, just like ketchup from a bottle, none'll come, and then a lot'll. So it has to be done with a 0.5mm nozzle brush, and it's not so easy to move in close and apply fine detail with that.

For those of you into 8Fs, it's worth mentioning the next Irwell 8F volume is published - 'The Book of the Stanier 8F 2-8-0s - Part Three: From Crewe to Swindon via Horwich 48301 - 48439'. My copy from Rail Books, who I recommend because they're a pleasant bunch, and also because of the effort they make to pack the books for posting to avoid damage. Must be another 2 or 3 parts of this epic yet to come. Need more book shelves!

 

[Ian_C]

I'm about halfway through the weathering process now.There's still a lot to do, and it's still looking a bit goofy. The gross streaking will get toned down and blended in shortly. The tender chassis still doesn't have the foundation layer of undercarriage grot. The motion needs completing and weathering. Handrails to go on. Cab doors. It's a mixture of airbrush, enamels and oils. There are some things you can't do with an airbrush, and some things you can't do without an airbrush.

The tender's coaled now. An unfortunate lump of real coal was found in the solid fuel for the stove, kidnapped and smashed to bits with a hammer. Sorted and sieved and glued on. Small stuff , a lot of dust and few larger lumps. The coal didn't look like coal though, all lovely and shiny. It was given a dusting of Metalcote Gunmetal to dull it down. The edges on a few of the larger lumps were polished up a little to create highlights.

This'll be about the point where I drop it on the floor, or spill thinners on it. Can't believe I've not done that yet. It'll all come together in the end...hopefully.

 

[Ian_C]

Leaving the handrails off to weather the smokebox, boiler and firebox makes life a lot easier. The streaks and dribbles run down without being interrupted. They eventually have to be fitted though. They were made from 0.9mm brass wire earlier in the build and put to one side (=sort of lost in the clutter at the back of the bench). It's not so difficult as you'd think. The end of the wire was gripped in a pin chuck and the handrail gently pushed through the knobs while twisting the wire. It even works with the kink at the front of the firebox. You do need to be sure the handrail knobs are properly soldered in place. One coming loose at this stage would be...vexing.


The tiny collars for the ends of the handrails were turned from brass and fixed in place with the tiniest drop of low visosity cyano.


Of course the handrails need to be painted now to match the rest of the loco. They were brush painted with etch primer, then with the body masked, they were sprayed the tired black body colour.


Weathering on the bench is done with a right odd mixture of oils (Abteilung 502), weathering powders and various AK effects fluids. The weathering powders are some Carr's powders from ages ago. They're still useful, but these days I prefer to make my own from oil pastels. I have a few earthy and rusty colour pastels ( Talens Rembrandt soft pastels) that can be powdered by scraping a little off with a scalpel. They seem to stick better to the painted surfaces than the Carr's. I find that weathering powder beats the airbrush for some things. Handy hint - if you want to fix powders or granular material like coal dust or ash to the loco as part of the weathering process the best thing I've found is MIG Ammo Pigment Fixer. It's very low viscosity, and surface tension fixative that you can apply without disturbing the weathering material. It dries clear and it leaves virtually no trace. It's probably a good fixer for ballast and ground cover as well. The other weathering goop worth having is AK Interactive Wet Effects Fluid. It's kind of like a gloss varnish, but much less viscous. It dries with a very thin film thickness so doesn't stand out or cover the texture of the underlying surface, and it can be built up to various levels of wetness. Useful for water and oil leaks, and mixed with black weathering powder it makes an effective oily crud.


The weathering of the motion caused some soul searching. I had read Martyn Welch's approach and thought I'd do likewise...until I came to look more closely at colour photos of grubby 8Fs. Mostly the motion was caked with a layer of oil and road dirt. Usually quite dark and a little shiny. It was sprayed all over matt grubby black and grime, and then treated with a thin layer of wet effects fluid and black/brown weathering powder. The annoyance is that you have to keep moving the motion to get to everything. The end of the motor shaft was gripped in a pin chuck to make it easy to rotate the motion back and forth.


You can see the slightly textured, oily surfaces catching the light in this photo. A few streaks and highlights and cleaning off the appropriate parts of piston rod and slidebar will finish the job.


While my attention was focussed on all this, things had been happening outside...

From slightly frosty morning to white out in less time than it takes to filth up a set of 8 coupled motion!

 

[Ian_C]

Weathering's nearly finished. Some photos will follow. There's always another thing of course, and I thought I'd make up some lamps. Most of the photos I'd looked at showed the LM style of lamp on the loco or tender. Modelu sell a set, which were ordered and turned up on the doormat super quick. They look the part, but there's a mini snag with them, or not, depending on how much the hair shirt of authenticity itches. They have a cavity open on the lower face of the lamp body that can be dropped over the lamp irons on the loco. Well , that works OK, but the prototype has a bracket on the back of the lamp body that slips over the lamp iron. The lamp therefore sits forward of the iron on the prototype. Also, where the lamp iron is close in to a surface, such as the rear tender body there's not much room to fit them. So, how to make a working bracket?

1. What you get from Modelu (actually 5 lamps, but one went for a wander around the workbench and missed the Kodak Moment). You can see on the leftmost lamp, the cavity that sits over the lamp iron as supplied.
2. There's a representation of the mounting bracket on the back face of the lamp body. The first step is to file that off.
3. A 'top hat' shaped bracket glued to the lamp would have a very small adhesive area, and most probably would ping off when fitting or removing the lamps. Also a bit of an a**e to make accurately at that size. The trick is to make a simple and robust version. Two slits are cut with a piercing saw in the rear body, aligned with the internal cavity, but not all the way to the top.
4. The material between the cuts is removed with the tip of a scalpel to make rectangular hole in the rear face.
5. The brackets are made from 0.14mm brass strips, 2mm wide.
6. You can see where this is going already if you've looked ahead and ruined the suspense. The brass strips are bent to give an internal width slightly greater than the width of your lamp irons. The lamp irons this model are scale size and about 1.0mm wide. I bent the strip the edge of a ruler that was 1.0mm thick. You end up with an inside dimension just over 1.0mm.
7. The U shapes are carefully trimmed back until they sit at the right height in the lamps. Too close in and the lamps won't slide onto the irons. Too far out and they'll flop all over the place. It helps to open the U's up a little so that they wedge in the lamp body and stay where they're put. When they're just right, a little low viscosity cyano is run down the sides to fix them in place.
8. Next job is to fit the cavity and replace the missing rear lamp surface. Little chunks of plasticard are whittled to be a good fit in the hole...
9. ...and fixed with more cyano. Careful not to clog up the bracket hole with glue.
10. The surplus plug is sliced off and a little filler applied on the lower and rear faces.
11. Once crispy dry, the filler is filed back smooth. Robust, working lamp brackets that aren't too difficult to make!

More episodes will follow covering the painting and weathering of the lamps...seriously!

 

[Ian_C]

BR head code for light engine & vans, Class G, is a single lamp showing white, centre in the low position above the bufferbeam. If it's just loco & tender, what goes on the rear of the tender? Presumably a single lamp in similar position? Tender lamp showing red if loco is travelling in the forward direction?

 

[Ian_C]

Hi Ian,

Some very nice weathering, but I have a query, I would have thought that the piston rods would have been oily shiny due to them passing through the glands, which needed to be reasonably steam tight, but if you have evidence that they were filthy, then I am more than happy to be corrected.

Like this? Gland is not completely steam tight, hence spray of emulsified steam oil running down crosshead.

 

[Ian_C]

Scale7JB, thanks for confirming rear lamp. Looking at colour photos again I see the lamp on the tender looks just the same as the lamp on the front when not lit. Here's how they turned out...

1. Humbrol matt brown enamel, AK Worn effects fluid and Vallejo Model Air acrylic used for the painting.
2. Small hole drilled in the base to mount them on cocktail sticks. Clean with a wipe of IPA and base coat of Humbrol enamel. Dry overnight.
3. Couple of coats of Worn Effects. Dried over the stove for 15 mins or so, then 3 thin coats of white acrylic. The area behind the lenses is painted black. Over the stove to dry.
4. One cup of tea later...moisten the white paint with water and scratch a little off where the lamps have been worn or bashed.
5. Glue the clear lenses in with ZAP Canopy Glue. Lamp oil and grubbiness from a little black and brown panel line wash.
6. Class G, light engine with up to 2 vans. Looks the part.