Wet Palettes Transform Acrylic Painting

The loss of model railroad paint manufacturers like Floquil may actually be one of the best things to happen to this hobby. When our crusty bottles of Grimy Black and Boxcar Red ran dry, the creaking was almost audible as we collectively raised our heads to see how other modellers coloured their miniatures. We found […]

1120 Visits the Paint Shop

The new airbrush made quick work of spraying 1120 all black. Compared with the old airbrush, this one is a delight. Sure, I can still make mistakes, but I don’t feel like I’m constantly fighting the tool. This was my first time using Vallejo paint and primer. I can’t even write that name without Marc […]

A New Airbrush

After last year’s rant about my airbrush, I decided to do something about it. The first consideration was that the new tool should be gravity-feed, rather than siphon-feed like both my previous airbrushes. Painting HO scale models uses a surprisingly small amount of paint – drops. Ultimately, I am not going to place a ton […]

Percy visits the paint shop

I found only the dried out dregs of a bottle of paint when I went to paint Percy’s new parts. The dregs looked almost viable, and I wanted the project done so I pressed forward with thinning and spraying. It was one of the worst airbrush experiences of my life. That’s saying something as my […]

Decals for 622

After all that experimentation with Cricut masks, I decided to press forward with decals for 622. They were included on the same decal sheet as the flat car decals from Precision Design, and went on beautifully. I was glad I’d included an extra copy of the decal for the tender rear because I did indeed […]

Cricut lettering: time to admit defeat

I think I’ve taken Cricut masks beyond the tool’s limit. I can likely use the technique to make the large numbers, but the small (1.5mm/.06″) letters, “CANADA ATLANTIC” on the tank collar are simply too small for the knife-cut masks. The best I could achieve was with two masks – one for the largely vertical […]

622’s boiler jacket

According to the erecting card, #21’s boiler jacket was “Planished Iron” when she emerged from Baldwin’s shops. What colour that was is almost anyone’s guess, I think. I doubt it was true Russian iron, but as that was also planished, I figure the boiler was probably a similar colour – which is to say some […]