So what have I been doing? Well, quite a bit. I've been working on the house and the garage. Making shelving and trying to get the garage organized. We've combined two households when we got married and have been trying to get organized. So, lots of non-railroad projects.
I did manage to build a spray booth. I has a bathroom fan for exhaust. I used to dimmer switch to control the fan speed. I found a great LED light bar for my lighting. It's great. I had tried using peel and stick floor tiles for the interior, but they only stuck on the bottom. The sides and roof quickly fell away. So, I guess I'll be a fan of the plywood interior.Next was making a Christmas present for my wife. Prototype police beware! I picked up a Kato Business Car on Ebay. The only one available was a CB&Q car. I removed the lettering with isopropyl alcohol and a Q-tip. That worked great for all the lettering. Next up was to make a new drumhead. I used a hole punch in some clear plastic. My wife likes the Anschutz era Sunset logo, so I applied that onto the rear drumhead (no lit). A Sunset on each side of the front side of the car. The number is her birthday. Next was to apply the red stripe. I tried using Microscale decals with limited success. Most often breaking them. I then applied Microscale liquid decal film. The decals stayed together and were applied with good success. I came back 10 minutes later and they had curled. Needless to say, I wasn't happy. The stripes were removed. Unfortunately, it's been cold in Phoenix in December and much of January, so the stripes are yet to be painted. Next will be the application of the Southern Pacific lettering, the car will be complete.
Lastly, I decided to gather up my P2K SD7s and SD9s to detail them for the new railroad. So here they are ready for paint stripping. I didn't want to strip the Black Widow units, but I'm modeling the early 80s. Of course, in order to start this project I needed to set up my modeling desk. Something that has been on my agenda for a long time.
Rick ... line your paint booth with white poster board - to increase the light and catch the over spray. When it gets too dirty replace it. I used photographic mounting board (because I had it). And I also cut up about 10 rectangles of the same stuff that are various sizes but all intended to be used to hold a single model when putting it in and out of the spray booth (no handling). Get a 9"-12" cheap plastic lazy susan, cut some rounds of mat board to fit inside it. Jim Betz
ReplyDeleteOne comment I did want to share with you as I was scrolling through you past blogs. Love the spray booth; I have built one almost the same. Works very well and is much cheaper than other options. However the bathroom fan will not cut it when spraying. It simply does not have the flow. I ended up having to redo mine. In my case, I came across an article that suggested finding an old dryer (as in clothes dryer) and pull the fan out of that. The nice thing about the clothes dryer fan is the motor is out of the air stream; driers have to have it that way so the lint does not build up and be ignited by a spark in the motor. Very similar to our concern when we spray oil based paints. Took a bit to rework since the ductwork is larger and, of course, the fan and motor are much bigger. But got it in and very happy with the results.
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