Do you need to remove the shell from the locomotive to weather it? Will air brush overspray get into the electronics or fowl connections?
Gary
Gary,
Just for giggles! Why not....the Prototypes do it all the time.
Just adjust Your paint flow on Your air brush to barely any paint flow out of the tip.
Take Care!
Frank
Are you asking if you can weather the locomotive without disassembling it?
I do it all the time.
Use Frank's advice and make your spray pattern very small.
I made a stand using a strip of wood (lath) just as wide the track and long enough to accommodate an engine and tender, with a coupler anchored at one end. There is a feeder wired to it that plugs into my track bus. I can allow the drivers to turn very slowly so the siderods do not make a "shadow" on the drivers.
The narrow width of the stand also allows me to shoot upwards under the running board and under the cab.
When everything is finished and I can handle the locomotive, I clean the wheel treads with a cotton swab and solvent (I use naptha but other thinners are equally effective).
Have FUN,
Ed
Yes
Yes you can.
.
I never disassemble for weathering (actually reweathering).
I weather very lightly when I first paint a model. As time goes by, if it displeases me I add more weathering, without disassembly.
Weathering is very easy to add more of, but difficult to remove.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
I agree, I do it all the time. Just be carefull around the trucks. I was a little careless on the bottom of the shell, and trucks, on a Kato, so that meant some unplanned clean up, but, not a problem.
Mike.
My You Tube
gmpullman ...There is a feeder wired to it that plugs into my track bus. I can allow the drivers to turn very slowly so the siderods do not make a "shadow" on the drivers....
When I'm painting locomotives, I brush-paint the frame and all of the wheels, including the drivers, siderods, and valve gear, then airbrush them in the paint booth with the drivers powered and turning. This evens out the finished appearance.To accomplish this, I have the bridge from a Bowser turntable set-up in the spray booth, with leads from an old Scintilla powerpack connected to the rails.When applying weathering, the locomotive is fully assembled except for lenses and glass, and the tender is connected. Since I prefer fairly light weathering, the majority of it is on the running gear, and for that reason, the locomotive is powered to keep the drivers turning, but loco and tender are also moving (restrained by my free hand) so that lead, trailing, and tender trucks also avoid the shadow effect of weathering appled to static wheels....
I weather freight cars in the same manner, moving them manually on the rails of the turntable....
Wayne
I would think you would want to mask off windows and headlights, the things that would be washed for visibility.
Rio Grande. The Action Road - Focus 1977-1983
riogrande5761I would think you would want to mask off windows and headlights, the things that would be washed for visibility.
I like it when modelers mask the area where the windshield wiper keeps an arc of the glass clean. A neat little detail.
Good point, though. I have found several sizes of easily removable Avery stickers to be handy for masking some windows. They have them in several sizes down to .31" x .5" and have curved corners that closely match [some] HO diesel and passenger windows.
riogrande5761 I would think you would want to mask off windows and headlights, the things that would be washed for visibility.
If you use water-based paint, a q-tip soaked in alcohol restores the windows very quickly and the bit of residue that remains around the edges looks good.
- Douglas
I prefer to take the shell off, but I use rattle-cans and weather powders so I don't have the control of an airbrush. I mask things with blue tape if there's any danger of overspray doing any damag.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
Thanks for all the posts. Do you you pay oil on the moving parts to make sure paint doesn't cause problems?
Guess I'll get an old lifelike DC loco to practice on. You know one of those that go 100 MPH or 0
gdelmoro ...Do you you pay oil on the moving parts to make sure paint doesn't cause problems?....
For diesels, there's not much of the mechanical stuff that can get gummed-up during painting.For steam locomotives, I wash the chassis (motor removed) prior to painting, mostly to remove grease and oil from the running gear. After the locomotive has been painted and is dry to the touch (usually only a few minutes) but is not yet cured (often several days), I re-install the motor and run the loco either on the layout or up on blocks. This removes the paint from all areas where moving parts are touching something, usually other moving parts. The loco is then set aside to allow the paint to fully harden. Once it has, all of those now-bare areas are lubed - the oil should have no effect on the nearby fully-cured paint.
Most people just weather the locomotive with the shell on, very few take it off.