How have people handled some of the Walthers Cornerstone buildings with regard to painting? I'm thinking especially about the George Roberts Printing Co. bldg. On the box, the brick curtain walls are brick red, yet the walls inside the box are all solid grey. The prospect of trying my hand at painting the small brick areas an actual brick color daunted me and I just assembled it as it came. This has always troubled me and I thought if another chance to build that structure presented itself, I would try to figure out how others handled that particular building. Can anyone provide some insight?
In my workroom, I've got a collection of rust and brown colored primers and paints, all in rattle-can sprays. They're a few dollars at big-box building supply and hardware stores. For a brick wall, I mask any edges where I'll be gluing the structure together with blue painters' tape and spray the wall. After the paint dries, I remove the tape and paint the trim around the windows by hand. Occasionally, I'll mask off part of the building and use a different spray color for accents and trim, although it's better to only use one color of spray on each part of the building to avoid too many coats, which will fill in some of the fine details of the casting.
For brick mortar, I'm now using a thin wash of white acrylic craft paint, with a bit of gray to tone it down. The wash allows the paint to flow into the mortar spaces between the bricks easily. As you apply it, you can easily wipe the surface of the bricks clean with a paper towel if you get too much on them.
Even if you've got a building assembled, you can still use tape and paper to mask parts you don't want painted, particularly trim and windows. That blue tape is great stuff.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
Thanks for the information, but that's really MY dilemma. I'm like a cub bear with an armload of shelled corn when it comes to detail work and the thought of masking off all those small areas makes me shudder. Ah well, might as well give it a try. Do you know if Walthers ever made those building with the curtain walls already painted? It seems odd that on the instructions I never saw a mention of how best to handle painting those areas
I do the same thing MisterBeasley does; paint the walls with gray primer (inside and out) then spray the outside with red primer. I also make the washes to imitate the mortar lines. But, before I do anything, I've noticed that the ends of many of the Cornerstone models aren't square. I sand them to make sure they're square, glue the walls together, then paint the structure as an assembly. The reason I prime the interiors is to give an opaque interior surface so you don't get the "glowing walls" effect when lit from the inside.
Marlon
See pictures of the Clinton-Golden Valley RR
I think you guys are missing what he is asking. He's talking about a brick curtain wall building and how to paint the brick that's between the concrete floors and pilasters. Not your typical brick building.
While I don't have any good suggestions, I'll mention a few ways to do it, even though none of them are all that great.
On the buildings I've made, I sprayed the building gray first and then hand painted the brick using a PollyScale brick color. You're right that it isn't easy. And to make it worse, if you want really good coverage, you have to apply two coats! I've found that using a good brush and just doing one or two sections at a time makes it much easier than trying to do the whole thing in day or two. It might take longer but it won't have you seeing double and muttering a lot of bad words.
Also, if you use a paint like PollyScale, you can sometimes wipe off any mistakes before it dries using a damp Q-tip or even a toothpick once it starts to thicken. And, you can always go back and brush paint some of the gray if needed.
Some folks have sprayed the building a brick color first and then masked of the brick areas before spraying on gray. That can work too, but I would think that all the masking would be almost as nerve wracking as the brush painting since it involves a lot of cutting and fitting.
A friend once told me that he thought it might be easier printing out a brick pattern on a decal sheet and applying that to the brick areas. But again, that seems like it would also involve a lot of accurate cutting and fitting. You might be able to do the same thing with thin embossed brick sheet, but again, it seems like it involves just as much fitting.
Those are some of the methods I've seen others use. I hope maybe someone else has a really good idea since I'd like to know an easier way too.
Jim
Mine is a kitbash using most of two George Roberts plants, but the technique works for any curtain wall structure or any all-brick one, too. After assembling the walls, I airbrushed mine grey (should have used a more concrete-like colour, but many of these structures did have the concrete painted), then brush-painted the brick. Were I to do it again, I'd use a more orange-ish colour for the brick.I then added mortar by applying pre-mixed drywall compound: with a clean rag over my fingertips, I dipped into the compound, then smeared it over the brick, working it into all the nooks and crannies. Don't worry about getting it on the "concrete", as it will wipe off later. Once the plaster has dried (usually, the first-done areas are dry by the time the rest of the building has been done) use a clean dry rag to wipe the excess compound from the faces of the brick - this is a task best done outdoors, where you can periodically shake the dust from the cloth. After that, install the doors and windows, and any other details, and weather using your usual methods.
Wayne
For that kind of building, I'd still go with masking. You don't have to do the whole thing at once. I'd spray the whole wall the concrete color first, and let that set thoroughly. Then, I'd take a sheet of paper and some tape, and mask off everything but one horizontal strip. Why? Because that way I don't have to cut the tape lengthwise for the whole building. Yes, I need to do some of that to mask the verticals between the brick sections, but they're small and I can deal with that. Spray it, let it dry, remove the tape and do the next section.
Each of us has things he's good at, and things he's klutzy at. I find masking tedious, but not at all challenging, and it's something that's easy to do when watching a football game. Brush painting, on the other hand, is detail work that takes me a long time, and I end up re-doing a lot of it.
The difficulty in masking a curtain wall building lies not in the faces of the concrete parts - the entire building can be done in ten minutes or less. What needs masking, if you're going to airbrush the brick portions, is the .030"-or-so edges of the concrete, where it actually abuts the brick. If you use a good-quality 1/2" chisel-shaped brush, the brick can be painted with little chance of getting the brick-coloured paint on the concrete. If you're using a water-based paint, simply wipe it off and/or touch-up the concrete afterwards, as required.Another option is to paint the entire structure with the brick colour first. Masking is then simplified, as there are only two or three different sizes of brick panels on the structure, allowing you to create masks en masse. Lay out adequately-wide masking tape, face down, on a sheet of glass, then build it up with subsequent layers until you have enough to cover all of the panels of any one size. Use your scale rule and a sharp blade to cut the tape to size, then peel off the required sheets and apply them. When all of the brick areas have been covered, spray with the concrete colour, making sure to get paint onto all of those edges of the concrete framework.
Wayne is right - it's that little return on the edges of the concrete that are very difficult to mask. I've also found that you can't take forever to mask off parts if you are using a low adhesion tape since it will start to come off fairly quickly, especially if you try to bend it around the edge of the concrete area. So I personally wouldn't use the blue masking tape for that, even though I like it a lot for other masking jobs.
Also, some folks think it's better to use a very tiny brush to paint edges like that. But it's more important that you use a brush that has a sharp edge or point. Usually a larger size one, as he said, will give you a better edge.
Rather than brush painting the brick, I use a fairly fine-tipped art marker. It does a neat job and doesn't take much time. I generally paint a building's sides gray or light tan inside and out, then color the bricks leaving areas in between tan or gray.
Thanks to everyone for the tips and advice. It IS refreshing to find others that experience the same frustrations of dealing with structure building and finishing! As a final question on this topic, is it safe to assume that ALL of the kits came in plain grey and that the box cover only showed how it COULD be finished?
I've built a few structures like this, including both Walthers and City Clasics. I paint the brick color first. Masking is somewhat tedious, but not especially complex - you're basically just doing a bunch of rectangles. Take your time and you can end up with a nice result.
Rob Spangler
mstoube ..... It IS refreshing to find others that experience the same frustrations of dealing with structure building and finishing! As a final question on this topic, is it safe to assume that ALL of the kits came in plain grey and that the box cover only showed how it COULD be finished?
..... It IS refreshing to find others that experience the same frustrations of dealing with structure building and finishing! As a final question on this topic, is it safe to assume that ALL of the kits came in plain grey and that the box cover only showed how it COULD be finished?
None of the Cornerstone kits come pre-painted, but the one under discussion did have the doors and windows cast in a different colour of plastic, as was the roof. I still have one of the boxes for the George Roberts Printing kit and the front of it clearly states: "Preproduction model shown. Colors shown are painted by modeler, paint not included. Figures, vehicles and other accessories sold separately. Blah, blah, blah..."
One of the attractions of kits is that they may be built and finished as each individual modeller desires, and can also be used for kitbashing. It's bad enough that you can see identical buildings on numerous layouts, but can you imagine if they were all the same colours, too? As for experiencing "frustrations of dealing with structure building and finishing", look at it as an opportunity to express yourself creatively. Take your time assembling and finishing your structure, and even if this is a first time experience, you will have the satisfaction of making it uniquely yours. It will also help you to develop skills which will make subsequent kit-building both easier and more enjoyable and the end results more satisfying to view.
It all goes back to what have you got the most of... money.... or time. If your spare time is worth more than $15.00 per hour and you have a good job, then you can buy some incredibly nice pre-built/custom built superbly painted and weathered stuff for between $150.00 and $450.00 per structure. (depending on size, gauge and complexity).
A lot of folks revel in model building and painting and often do a bit of kit bashing/personal alteration on everything they build. They just say to heck with the time invovled. Depends on where you are coming from and the degree of excellence you desire in the finished product.
I hate the high prices of 95% of the kits now offered. Many train shows often have 5 or 10 folks selling finished buildings from old kits that are just incredibly poorly assembled or painted for 2-10 bucks each. I snap up a few, take them home, knock them apart and start to work rebuilding and repainting them and altering them to my own purposes.
I'll cut a Tyco railroad station in half or into three parts and then make a "shorty" country station, plus a remote freight loading dock and a small out building from the one item. Old "brass hats" who built those old TYCO, Revell, and Life-Like structures can often see the origins in my finished work in spite of my best efforts to cover the beautifully shingled roofs with nasty old tar paper or add a bass wood or plastruct addition or alteration.
Richard
If I can't fix it, I can fix it so it can't be fixed
Of course, you could take an easy way out that we haven't mentioned yet. You could paint the whole building one color like beige or green since many of these actual buildings were painted after some time. I don't think it would look too bad if you weathered it and added some interesting signs and details. You could draw attention to the windows by painting some of the panes (on the back of the window glass) to resemble replacement panes that were gray, green, beige, white or even a few black ones.
Actually, I would do that to the windows regardless to add some extra detail.
Just another thought.