thibaultron

On another aspect of using Vallejo, and other flat paint, and something I've been wondering about myself. Decaling. Specifically, how to apply the decals to a flat paint surface. It has been a few decades since I did any decalling, and then it was on gloss finishes. I was watching a Model Railroad seminar last weekend, and one of the presenters described his method. He shoots the entire finish painted model (painted with Vallejo) with Future Floor polish (I assume any good gloss clear would work). I had thought of spot glossing the decal area, this is much better. He then applies the decals with the appropriate solutions to get them settled. He then shoots the entire model again with clear, step I had not considered. He says that this blends in the clear part of the decal film. A good idea. Then he finishes with a final flat coat. In his case Dullcoat. As model rail cars get handled a lot, I this must give a good durable finish. When I get to the decalling stage on my models, I'll try it this way.

Hitting a really poor kit, with a hammer, into splinters to remove it from the world?😄

As a side note. During the firing they discovered that the 24 pound shot would go through both sides of the ship, even if it hit one of the frames dead on. It was actually (realitively) better for the crew if it missed the frames, as there were fewer splinters created. This info was from a lecture I found on several ship wrecks, given at the Texas A&M university, I think.

Here is his test of some of the Badger Stynylrez primers. Badger also has several other color primers, the Black, White, Gray, and Red Brown (and maybe the Flesh) are probably more along our lines (for ships at least). The Synylrez has a better durability, and sandability reputation than the Vallejo ones. Vallejo has, in my experience, terrible sanding properties, and requires 48 hours or so of setting before overcoating for decent durability. Styntlrez is rated for a 0.5mm needle, and I believe 30PSI for application.

I forgot to mention. The ps-290 (the trigger one) uses a fair amount of air 35 liters/minute, or (thanks to the internet) ~1.25 gallons/minute. The small airbrush compressors are rated at ~20 l/m, so one with a tank is pretty much required, and then with breaks to refill. My Harbor Freight 3 gallon compressor is rated 0.9 g/m at 40PSI, so it might be able to keep up at 30 or so PSI. A corrding to the one video, the IWATA Pistol grip fits the 290.

Here are some reviews on the airbrushes Barbatos Rex uses in his videos. I neither have these, nor represent the manufacturer, etc. It is interesting to note that these brushes are made in the same factory as IWATA! I think I'm going to pick up the 290, at least as it seems to be the same as the IWATA, but less expensive. I need it for priming large models at least. I'm thinking of a Badger Patriot for general use, but the adjustable air flow valve on the 270/289 might come in handy.

This might be an alternative spray booth for some.

A couple more painting videos from Barbatos Rex. The first is a general arcylic painting video. This one was a few months before the "Painting Vallejo Air" video, I first posted. He is using the .2mm needle for these, rather than the .5mm in the other video. The next is one one the new Vallejo Mecha paints. These are designed for rougher handling, in this case for poseable models (robot models). He says he is going to be doing decalling, clear coating, and making your own decals videos, soon.

I found this video on YouTube, about how to properly Airbrush with Vallejo Model Air paints. He also has several other videos that would be useful to plastic modelers. One of the additional videos is on how to properly clean your airbrush after using the Vallejo paints. Prior to his video on airbrushing them, he had dismissed them as useless, based on his many years of airbrushing other paints. Now he likes them. He has about 40 years of plastic modeling experience.

Yes, I have a couple of items from Ebay that have been sitting in the same post office distribution centers since mid December! Accourding to the tracking numbers they have been "Checked In" to the same centers several times, but never out!

The AL kit is actually a very good represenation of how the ship looked in Baltimore before the 80s, when they corrected it to the 1855 original setup. So AL can not be fully blamed, they designed it as it actually existed then.

I'll look, thanks.

Part 03 Then close the program, then when it has finished, select “Discard Project”. Now you can use a graphics editor to finalize the panorama. As another note: ICE saves the composite as a compressed .TIF file. So the first thing you should do is open it with your graphics editor, and save it as an uncompressed TIF file, before you further work on it. I’ll show an example using my very old copy of Paint Shop Pro 9. No explanation, other than the pictures, as your program will be different. I then rotated it to level. In this case 1.75 degrees left. Yes, I cheated and had previously used my CAD program to find that angle. Then cropped it Now I have a nice composited digital plan file. Not all the drawings inside the plan are square with the border, so use an internal drawing line as your reference to “level” the whole drawing. This was the case with this plan, so I used one of the center lines. Check several center or baselines to make sure the drawing is not bowed or otherwise not correct. On this drawing the deck center line is bowed (by about 1”) but all the other base and center lines are straight to within the width of the drawn line. The original drawing must have this error, and it is not due to the compositing.

Part 02 Select “Save”, and the file will be saved, when that is done, the finished file will be displayed. Don’t worry that it is not square in the “Frame”, you can fix later with a graphics program. In this case it is also upside down. That must have been how I scanned it, or at least how Gallery saw the best way to combine the files. In any case, copy the stitched file to your original directory. I generally delete the directory file in “Pictures”, just to save disk space. ICE is a bit simpler. Note: You can use any directory with ICE. Start ICE This screen will be displayed Select “New Panorama From Images”. Go to your directory and select the images. This screen will be displayed, with your images displayed. Select “Next” The process then starts. The process continues. The finished panorama is displayed. Select “Next” again and the “Crop” screen is displayed. Select “Next” and the “Save Image“ Screen will be displayed. In the “Image” area select the box in the “Image Format” section, then “TIFF”. Then select “Export to disk”. The file will be saved. The save screen will be displayed, notice that ICE also supplies a name, if you want to use it. Select “Save” and the file will be saved.

Part 01 Most of us don’t have very large format scanners at home. One that could scan a large plan sheet. Nor do we necessarily have even paid access (or the money for same) to a commercial one. Thus we are stuck will our standard 8 ½ by 11+ scanner. As some will note, scanning in the plans can add distortion from the scanner itself, as can the process of combining them. If you are careful to check for this, some corrections can be made using a photo editing program. For most of us, any distortions are quite small, and probably less than a real wooden ship varied from the original plans, just due to the fact wood is a flexible and changing media and measurements were not all that precise and the ship could settle during framing and construction. You, of course, can redraw the plans by hand, or use the drawing directly to build your model, but many times CADing the plans works as well or better. There is a way to scan in a large sheet one section at a time and combine them into a single scanned sheet. Why would you need a complete scan of a sheet if you have the original? There could be several reasons. Here are my typical ones. 1. I want to rescale the drawing. 2. There are larger scale detail drawings on the same plans sheet, and you want to make scale drawings as templates. For instance. The plans for Model Expos’ Willie Bennett, has 1/32nd scale main drawings, and 1/16th scale detail drawings on the same sheet. 3. There are many parts on the model that are copies of the same part, (blocks, anti-aircraft guns, cleats) that can easily be copied and moved with CAD. 4. You want to print a copy of a section, and build the model on it rather than the original plans. 5. There is missing information on the plans. A section that has been ripped out and lost, too few frames drawn. I have a drawing I’m working on from an “Out Of Production” kit (manufacturer is no longer in business) where the fore frame line drawings are close and the stern lines completely factious, I assume to keep someone from building the boat from only the plans. The bulkheads were precut in the kit. On another boat I’m drawing, the masts are shown broken off just above deck, with no spar information supplied. Using the short length of fore stay shown, and an old woodcut, I found after a couple years of searching, I was able to determine the mast length for both the fore and main masts. The woodcut showed that the foremast ended just above the fore stay fitting. Not a very hard example, but the plan sheet was too small to draw the masts or sail plan, so CAD was helpful. 6. You need to check some of the drawing against anther area, and want to trace it out in CAD. A case I run into frequently is the frame lines not matching the body lines, or offset table. 7. The various views differ. I’m drawing up a Santa Fe business passenger car, for 3D printing. After scanning in the drawing and starting to CAD I found that the overhead and two side views in the original drawing were slightly different lengths (yes all 3 views differed by several inches). In the case of this drawing, several of the dimensions given were also wrong! 8. You want to compare the plans to photographs (as above) of the original prototype. Again with the train car above, the side views had the windows slightly incorrectly placed. Also using the photographs in direct comparison I was able to correctly place all of the several hundred rivets, precisely. The pictures at the very top and bottom are the sides for a version of the car, after AC was added in the 50s. Those pictures are the sides from a kit. 9. You want to make bulkhead drawings from the offset or frame drawings. It is easy to copy, mirror the one side and place the “other” side once one is done. Here is an simple example: 10. You need to have CAD files for a laser cutter, or 3D printer. Anyway, on to how to do it. 1. Scan the drawing in sections, allowing an inch or 2 of overlap (top bottom and sides). a. Shown is an example of two overlapped scans. As you can see, both scans have hefty amount of overlap. The overlap shown is far more than needed, but that is alright. 2. Save each scan as a separate file. It is best to save them as .TIF or .TIFF files, with no compression. Many other types, such as .JPG or .JPEG, compress the file EACH time you save it! This causes the final file, after several iterations, to be quite blurry. 3. Now there are two ways to get the scans into one picture for your CAD or graphics file. a. You can lay each picture onto a larger graphic editor blank “Canvas”, aligning each by hand. This can be difficult, because as you move the original around for the scans, you will rotate it slightly as it is moved. This means you also have to custom rotate each pane to a common angle, as well as line them up. i. This is easier if you are lining them up in a CAD program, as long as each is prerotated using the CADs ability to measure angles. After finding how much the pane is off by, use the graphics editor to correct the pane angle. You can then place all the scans in the CAD window, mark common points and move the panes to mate at those points. I can give examples of this using DesignCAD, if you want, later. b. You can use a Graphics Editor program to combine them automatically (Called a Panorama or Composite). Most graphics programs can do this with photographs, but many not so well with drawings. I have had poor luck with Photoshop and GIMP. The best two I have found are Microsoft Live Elements (Photo Gallery) and Microsoft ICE (Image Composite Editor). Both are free. i. The Live Elements app Photo Gallery can be used to create a panorama from drawing scans. This is a 32bit program and can stumble on larger files or a large number of files. Note that, with Gallery, the files must be in the User’s “Pictures” directory. MS no longer supports this program, and has taken it off their site, but a full download is available at; https://web.archive.org/web/20170112124505/http://wl.dlservice.microsoft.com/download/C/1/B/C1BA42D6-6A50-4A4A-90E5-FA9347E9360C/en/wlsetup-all.exe ii. The ICE is a free, current, download and is 64bit (There is no telling with MS, how long they will support it, though, as with Live Elements) At: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=52459 c. Be sure to carefully check the final “Stitched” drawing, things can and have gone wrong with my files. i. Sometimes the process just fails spectacularly. ii. Sometimes the panorama is distorted. d. If difficulties arise try: i. Checking that your overlap is OK. ii. Make sure that all the images are correctly oriented to each other, all right side up, or all upside down. iii. Perhaps stitch the scans in smaller groups, then stitch the larger groups together. iv. Try a different program. Here are some examples with the two programs. Photo Gallery Note make a copy of the directory you want to combine the pictures in, in that same directory. Sometimes Gallery modifies the files in the original directory also! Then copy the “Copy” directory to “Pictures”. Now that the directory is in Pictures, Start Photo Gallery, and select the directory you will be using. Then select all the images you want to combine Select “Create” Then “Panorama” The program will then start the process. And proceed to the next step. When it is done (if it competes, otherwise you will get an Error message), you are asked to save the Stitched file. Note a name is generated for the panorama, change it if you like.

About the comment about the servers going down, just before a deadline. True, but I have a story about regular drafting. Many years ago at a company I worked for a draftsman was working late to finish a batch of drawings. He put the rolled up drawings in his waste basket, as he finished them, to save time. (I will admit that wasn't the best way to store them before filing.) That was fine until he went to the bathroom, and came back to find that the janitors had come through and emptied the trash! The drawings were destroyed before he found the janitors. He spent the entire weekend redrawing them.

Wow! That is a beautiful model!

The CAD program I was given was DesignCAD, and it is still my main one. I've been doing 3D printing designs in SketchUp, the free version. I also took wood and metal shop in High School, and am another "fix it my self" type.

I took drafting in Junior, and Senior High School, and a couple in College(Electrical Engineering, the Mechanicals had a lot more). Drafted by circuit board designs by hand at work, until the Graphic CADs came along. Then went into software programing, as well as the computer hardware design. All that came into use, when I went into process control programing (program the control computer for factories, or in my case water treatment plants). Was given a copy of a CAD program, by a coworker, and have been using various new versions of that since 2D and 3D. On an side note: I had to take a year of typing, which I got a "D" in. I got up to 10 words a minute, but they insisted I go faster, and I completely lost it, and have been a two finger typer since then! 34 years as a two finger programmer! The advent of computer monitor based programming, vs. IBM Cards, was a great blessing to me! Much easier to go back and fix all those typos! When I got into the process control field, I fell in love with the graphics side of laying out the operator control screens (which still had a lot of underlying coding going on). . One boss came in and saw me coding, and exclaimed "Your a two finger typer?". Then she stopped and watched for a short time and said "But you're fast!" and left me alone.

Same fate as the Pennsylvania.

Should get back to it next month.

Looking good!

HO scale, Santa Fe roughly 1935 to 1957, freelanced. the layout will be in three "sections" a port scene 2.5' x 12', an engine terminal with passenger car servicing 2.5 X 7.5, and a 12x 9.5 oval shelf layout with the modules 2 foot deep. At first the oval will be just a folded over double loop (making one circuit two times around) for running passenger trains while i watch. Later I will add sidings and industries to turn it into a switching layout also. I bought the Fast Tracks jigs so I can make my own turnouts for the engine terminal, and oval.

Yes, huge B-17 fan! I know, so many projects in the que. So far in the past month of being retired, I've gotten to spend maybe 1hour in the shop. I still have my Pyro skipjack and French fishing boat to complete, as well as an almost ready to paint Japanese houseboat. Then there is the whole building the train layout thing, though that is being held up due to lack of funds.

Nice! I have a vac form kit of a 1/72 B-17 YB, the first production model, and am terrified of it! Maybe some day I will tackle it. I have the complete series of 1/72 kits (all the A thru G variants), and would like to build the vac kit, when I finish those. I even have a card version kit of the prototype. Probably not enough years left to finish all of my stash.