Painting and Finishing Techniques by Gary Edmundson

Reading the Airfix bookazine has inspired me to read more about how the military/aircraft modellers paint and finish their models. Osprey's range of books has some interesting titles on the subject, so after a browse on Amazon I ordered this one;

 

As the cover suggests it covers AFVs and aircraft, using examples in the 1/35 and 1/48 scales. Pre-shading, masking, drybrushing etc. are well covered, as you'd expect, but so is the use of oil paints, something which railway modellers like myself wouldn't think of useing. One technique which stands out is applying a metalic finish by drybrushing using enamel silver mixed with raw umber oil paint. There's also some excellent methods on woodgrain finishes. I'm not sure how much of the information given I'll actually make use of but its always interesting to read how other modellers in different disciplines work.

Interestingly, in the introduction the writer tells us that plastic modellers originally looked to railway modellers for ideas on finishing models, now it seems that an increasing number of railway modellers are looking to the plastic modelling crowd for new techniques.

Painting and Finishing Techniques, Gary Edmundson, Osprey Publishing 2010, ISBN 978-1-84603-263-9

Paul.

Judith Edge Ruston 48DS - part 1.

I've been building a pair of these, one for myself and one for a friend, for quite a while now. I've put my own to one side for the time being and I'm currently concentrating on my friends as he's been waiting for far too long for it!

Anyway, here's a couple of shots of his as it stands at the moment, firstly the chassis;

 

And the chassis, body and frames bolted together for testing;

The loco comes with a High Level Kits mechanism included with drive to both axles, gearing is an impressively low 108:1 meaning that the loco crawls along quite nicely, and it can be built compensated.

There's still lots more work to do, such as adding weight to the body, fitting the resin sandboxes and other details and soldering the derail beams in place onto the bufferplanks.

Paul.

RT Models Hudson Tipper - part 5.

I've been busy fitting the end details on these two wagons.

First the angled strengthening brackets were fitted, there are four of these per end;

 

I held the chassis lightly in the rubber jaws of my vice when soldering. There are tabs on the brackets which locate into slots on the end plates, however care is still needed to make sure everything sits square. This is where soldering comes into its own as the bracket can be tacked, checked, repositioned, checked, and so on until you're satisfied that everything is nice and square. The bracket on the left above is fully folded to shape, on the right hand bracket I've left the longest (angled) fold flat to make it easier to hold the bracket in tweezers. Only after I was finally satisfied with the position did I fold the angle over. I took several days over fitting the brackets rather than rush.

The next job was to fit the centre locating pins and the end stops;

 

All pretty easy really. To fit the end stops I tinned the top of the end plates, held the stops in place with tweezers, then applied heat from underneath, effectively sweating the joint.

All soldering again done with a 25W Antex and 188 degree solder. I thought that I might have to step-solder at some stage but so far that hasn't been necessary.

Still more work to do but I'm getting there;

 

Paul.