Ian Rathbone's Workshop

[oldravendale]

Hi Ian.

I've fund that, when "adjusting" metallic paint it has a tendency to smear across the surface of the underlying paint and be somewhere between difficult and impossible to remove in totality. I don't have any problem with regular pigmented paints. I keep the brush barely damp with spirit by wetting it and then drying on absorbent kitchen paper. Despite this do you suspect that the brush remains too wet?

Brian

 

[P A D]

Hi Ian,
One of my other hobbies is collecting old drawing instruments, so I'm glad to see that you refer to the pen as a ruling pen not a bow pen, which is often erroneously used by modellers. Possibly the instrument used for offset lining (the spring bow pen) is responsible for the confusion, but either way, ruling pen or bow pen, your work is exquisite.
Cheers,
Peter

 

[Ian Rathbone]

Hi Ian.

I've fund that, when "adjusting" metallic paint it has a tendency to smear across the surface of the underlying paint and besomewhere between difficult and impossible to remove in totality. I don't have any problem with regular pigmented paints. Ikeep the brush barely damp with spirit by wetting it and then drying on absorbent kitchen paper. Despite this do you suspectthat the brush remains too wet?

Brian

I get that problem too. I find that lifting the brush from a fairly flat position to one where just the tip is in contact will retain the excess paint within it, all this while still moving along an edge. If there are still smears of whatever paint I let it dry then tackle it with a barely damp tissue after a day or two. Ultimately T-cut is the last resort.

Ian R

 

[Ian Rathbone]

Continuing with the bathtub. The kit is a Tower Models. When I first did one of these the kit was fairly new introduction and the heroic body casting was very crisp and well formed but this one is showing signs of mould wear. There are lots of pock marks and the detail is less sharp and, as I found out when drawing the lines on, there are subtle irregularities in the body shape. However to move on, photo 4 shows the narrow lines started. These are simply a centre line for marking out followed by touching lines each side to build up the width.


At the front end I continued the centre lines using pen and French Curve and followed up by brushing in the full width of the line. There's no easy way of doing this, it's continual stop, check, squint, adjust, continue. Photo 5 shows the lining mostly complete on one side. I popped the bodies back on to their chassis to transfer the line positions onto the tender using a height gauge and making a subtle mark.


The tender lining is fairly straight forward. The LMS transfers need to be applied after the two wide lines are marked so that the breaks in the narrow lines can be positioned.


Photo 7 shows the gold lining on this side of the tender marked out ready for filling in. Again brush work for the wide lines and pen for the narrow





More later.

Ian R

 

[oldravendale]

I get that problem too. I find that lifting the brush from a fairly flat position to one where just the tip is in contact will retain the excess paint within it, all this while still moving along an edge. If there are still smears of whatever paint I let it dry then tackle it with a barely damp tissue after a day or two. Ultimately T-cut is the last resort.

Ian R

Thanks Ian.

I'd not thought of attacking the problem after "a day or two". I'd assumed (assumption being what we all know it is) that the paint would be "fixed" within 24 hours. That will be a useful technique with non metallic paints too.

B

 

[Ian Rathbone]

The tender lining has been filled in with the gold so here here they are back on their chassis to check it all lines up. There is now a pause for a day while paint hardens off before I either repeat on the other side or continue this side with the red border to the gold. The chassis were painted by the builder and need various changes. Crossheads were always painted black and, from photos, it appears that the tyres should be black.


Meanwhile there are a couple of locos lurking in the background. The green one is named after the grand daughter of the streamliner. It was built by Bill Davis from the David Andrews kit.


I find it strange that 46202 only had a single chimney despite having a Coronation boiler.

The other loco is a Finney M7 in P4 gauge.



More later.

Ian R

 

[LarryG]

I find it strange that 46202 only had a single chimney despite having a Coronation boiler.

'Princess Anne' had a Princess boiler.

I stopped trusting flange depths when lining out Streamliners after a cock-up, and always measured off tender lining with the ensemble on a short length of track. The LMS bathtub front ends are not the easiest things to line out, so I don't envy you.

 

[Scale7JB]

'Princess Anne' had a Princess boiler.

I stopped trusting flange depths when lining out Streamliners after a cock-up, and always measured off tender lining with the ensemble on a short length of track. The LMS bathtub front ends are not the easiest things to line out, so I don't envy you.

Hmmm I was thinking something similar. I hope there's continuity in flange depth, Ian.

JB.

 

[Ian Rathbone]

Oh dear, a lifetime of wondering all for nothing. So it was just the cylinders then. The flange depths on loco and tender are the same, in this case.

So, onward. I decided to do the front curves on the other side of the engine and then the red lines on the first side. My logic was to get the awkward bits out of the way, and they are not vulnerable while the loco is on its side. I also wanted to see how it looked with the red lines on. The only difficult bit on the tender is the letter S. These are HMRS Methfix transfers, which I had in stock, and they have a black outline where the red should be. The L & M were straightforward pen and ruler jobs but the S was fine brushwork and corrections.
The front curves needed slight change in method as I normally work from left to right so it meant starting the curves from the top and working forwards and down (and turning the french curve over). All this work is done holding the body vertically between the knees.



The meeting point above the middle lamp bracket will be refined when the secondary colours go on.



The bare patch where the name plate goes is where I have scratched off part of the boiler band to allow the plate to sit flat. Red outlines to the numbers - straight lines with pen, curved with brush, Winsor & Newton Series 7, size 00, best you can get.

While all this is going on I was painting the inside of the cab in Ivory (multiple coats to get it to cover and fill in the rough bits of casting), and black below the widows. The cab, being part of the casting, has very thick walls so I filed a bevel around the inside of the windows to reduce the apparent thickness. I painted the reveal black and the bevel ivory.

More to follow.

Ian R

 

[Ian Rathbone]

This side of the tender is complete with the black line, nearly invisible, beside the red.

This side of the engine too except for the power class, a touch up above and below the name plate where bare white metal is showing and black paint to details at the front end.



Work has been going on on the other side and on the back of the tender - buffer beam and the lining thereof.

The fancy lamps are a project in themselves. They are a brass casting for the lamp and n/s etched wings. The builder had glued them together and then glued them to the lamp brackets because there were no sockets, so I prised these carefully from the lamp brackets, luckily before painting. I removed the glue, made a socket for the bracket from n/s shim which I soldered to the back of the lamp then I soldered the wings back on. I know, I know, I'm only a painter but these things need to be done. The lamps are Crimson Lake with gold stripes on the wings, and they are now painted, but I'm filling up the lenses with drops of PVA.

More later.

Ian R

 

[Ian Rathbone]

The final hurdle was to fit the back head into the cab. The back head came ready painted, why do people insist on painting red every thing in the cab that moves? I stripped all the red paint, the zebra stripes on the water gauges and the gauge faces, and then repainted them. It fitted well enough but there was no obvious way of soldering or gluing it in, so out it came and I made a thin brass base for it, soldered in a couple more layers of scrap brass, offered it up and drilled a pilot hole through the cab floor and through the three layers of brass. The holes were opened out and the base tapped 10BA, I do this because I distrust soldered in nuts in hard to get at places. The three layers of brass give a decent thickness for a screw thread and it's not going to fall apart.

Finally I scraped the paint off the 'stainless steel' trim along the base of the casing (and straightened the top lamp bracket that's been bent back in every photo). That done I gave it a coat of satin varnish and let it sit for 24 hours.

The glazing came with the kit in the form of vacuum formed panels which fitted well but suffer from a small visible radius at the edges. I put them in but didn't glue them in case my customer wanted to try an alternative.







On to the next paint job...

Keep safe

Ian R

 

[phileakins]

A 'like' is totally insufficient!

 

[Yorkshire Dave]

The headlamp fairings just scream Art-Deco.

 

[Podartist79]

Absolutely fantastic work Ian and I LOVE all the extra work you’ve put in to improve it!

 

[paulc]

Hi Ian , a shot of you sitting with a loco between your knees being painted , it would get pride of place on my hobbyroom wall and so inspirational. Thanks for your posts .
Cheers Paul

 

[Ian Rathbone]

This must be unique. Photographed in Kidderminster Railway Museum.



I wonder how much that plate is worth.

Keep safe

Ian R

 

[Ian Rathbone]

Time for another update. It's been the year of the van, the more exotic ones have already been posted here so now some plainer stuff. It may be a simple paint job but it's a whole new world of research as my knowledge of the field is next to zero. I didn't know there was such a variety of Southern vans, they previously all looked the same to me. These are two out of six, built by van expert Pete Silvester from the Slaters kits.



The next are WEP kits, not sure who built them. Luckily there are enough livery details in the kit instructions, and WEP do the transfers. The roof boards were provided by my customer.



Right, easy stuff out of the way. Next is a GW Armstrong beautifully built by Malcolm Mitchell. It is photographed without its driving wheel centres which I had forgotten about until Malcolm pointed it out - they were retrieved from the box and fixed in position, but not before the photos.





Some detail.



My customer wanted it painted to match his Lee Marsh Dean Single but I have some reservations about livery of that model, which I have discussed with Lee. The one is the colour of the frames which I think is more Venetian Red than Indian Red and, secondly the width of the lining on the earlier samples, of which this is one. Because of Covid it was impossible for me to get paint to match the frames (I need to see a sample) so I suggested I do a partial repaint of the Dean, which was agreed.

I repainted the frames, wheels and splashers with the paint I normally use for Indian Red and re-lined them, and after matching the body paint, I over ruled the orange lining on the tender and cab sides to thin it down somewhat.



Nice model and beautifully engineered.

More stuff later.

Keep safe

Ian R

 

[Ian Rathbone]

I painted two of Roger Scanlon's (West Midland Works) class U locos. Here's one before weathering -



And here's the other one after a gentle weathering - an engine that's cared for and has been cleaned

.




Now back to bread and butter GWR (ish)



This is a San Cheng Castle but it's a 1935 engine with a 1928 emblem on the tender, painted in the earlier dark green. Don't ask.

Something more conventional, a GWR steam rail motor being built by Kevin Wilson. I only got the body.



Seems to be a lot of GW, here's a King for Pendon, built by Stephen Williams. Beeson wheels no less.



This next one was a little more taxing. This is the GCR 'Valour' I mentioned upthread, in 2mm scale. Built by Tim Watson (see his thread).



The engine is about the size of my thumb. Here it is again for comparison purposes posed by my 7mm Jersey Lily.



Keep safe

Ian R

 

[john lewsey]

Ver y nice work indeed

 

[Deano747]

'Like' just isn't enough!! Stunning work, as always!

Regards, Rob. (Deano)