Painting Wales

[JohnB40]

Hello to all,

I have decided to paint the wales on my Unicorn build matt black They look odd being natural walnut as is the rest of the hull,with black upper works. I have given the hull a coat of WOP (non acrylic) about a year ago to seal it (painfully slow build progress). I never have much luck brushing on acrylics,so I bought some Billings Boats enamel paint and thinners. I have lightly sanded the wales with #400 and would appreciate any hints about painting over WOP. Will enamel adhere to this finish ok in the long term? I plan to thin the enamel and multi coat. Any suggestions paint to thinners ratio?  I will be using Tamiya masking tape to mask the wales. Is there is a better tape to use to prevent bleeding under the tape even with burnishing? A lot questions I know,but I have been staring at this for a while and can't seem to get on with it for fear of making a mess.....Thanks for any tips.

[MEDDO]

I would be interested if anyone could chime in on this as well.

[allanyed]

A little too late, but for the next time.  For unsealed wood, India Ink or a dye is  good substitute for paint.  Even black marker works very well.  It penetrates and leaves no brush marks, and any finish can be used over it.   

Allan

[vossiewulf]

What he said. India inks work great and will give you the blackest black that ever blacked a totally black thing. It builds a slight film, thinner than paint, is almost unnoticeable with one coat.

 

Alcohol-soluble aniline dyes can be bought at Woodcraft or any luthier supply place. I've been somewhat disappointed in the blacks as so far they have a purplish tint to me, but all other colors are great, they dry instantly, and they don't raise grain so you can wipe on your stain and then spray a clear finish one minute later. Best of all to me, since they're molecular color and NOT pigment, they in no way obscure the underlying grain. This is how guitar makers create bright green curly maple guitars:

 

Permanent black markers are usually a form of lacquer and work fine too. I haven't seen anything about how permanent those permanent colors are though.

[Maury S]

Thinning and multiple coats is the secret to a beautiful finish. Read over Chuck Passaro's Cutter build.  I use Model Shipways hull and Spar Black, thinned 50%.  Works well for me with no streaks or brush marks.

Maury

[vossiewulf]

On 6/1/2017 at 9:28 AM, Maurys said:

Thinning and multiple coats is the secret to a beautiful finish. Read over Chuck Passaro's Cutter build.  I use Model Shipways hull and Spar Black, thinned 50%.  Works well for me with no streaks or brush marks.

Maury

Yes, called glaze coats (you're painting like Da Vinci when you do) and I do the same brush painting, as you say it leaves zero brush marks. If you decide to brush paint your model, this is really the way to go.

 

Thin the paint much more than usual, so the coats you put on are translucent and have enough thinner that it's more like pushing some liquid around with your brush.

 

The coats dry very quickly, you can paint coats this way every couple of minutes and once you're up to 4-5 coats you'll have an excellent painted surface.

[wefalck]

First a question: what's WOP ?

 

There would be no problem applying thin washes of acrylics over say nitrocellulose-based wood primers/fillers. As said above, thin layers of dilute paint are the secret. In fact, I am using the paints that come pre-diluted for airbrush application.

 

As to 'permanent' markers: my experience is that in the long-term they are not so permanent. The term 'permanent' mainly refers to the fact that they are not water-soluble. The ink or pigment used mostly is organic and hence eventually will break down under UV light.

 

Striktly speaking 'india ink' is not an ink, which is a dye in a suitable solvent, but a very dilute suspension of colloidal carbon particles (soot). It is the carbon, the soot, that makes the ink so permanent. The carbon will not break down, like organic inks, under UV light. India ink should also work over nitrocellulose primers.

[druxey]

I believe WOP is the acronym for 'Wipe-On Poly(urethane)', Wefalck.

[vossiewulf]

I had forgotten about artist's markers. These are acid-free archival ink and should last at least as long as paint and I very much like the thinness of the coating- much much more in-scale than any paint or finish we typically use.

This isn't quite as black as india ink, but would be super-easy to do. 

 

BTW, what was the contemporary black pigment? If they used carbon black like india ink then that would be the accurate choice, as wefalk said, india ink doesn't fade.

[wefalck]

The carbon was 'lamp-black', i.e. the very fine sublimated combustion product from different types of (vegetable or animalic) oils. Lesser qualities - and would think these were used in the prototype, were also made from charring wood or bones (while ivory black sounds like a contradiction in terms, in fact it was made by charring ivory). Have a look here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_black.

 

In China and Japan ink for drawing and writing was/is prepared on the spot from rubbing ink-cakes in a shallwo vessel and then adding water together with gum arabicum as a binder. This would also be an option, if you don't like ready-made inks.

 

 

[vossiewulf]

Thanks wefalk. It seemed likely they'd use what they called lamp black and we call carbon black today with buckyballs and nanotubes and graphene.

 

I ordered some eye-shadow application sponge brushes for makeup yesterday, I think those might make good india ink applicators, and I guess am going to continue to experiment. I'm still a ways from needing to make a decision. But the Faber-Castell pens are pretty black, people should really consider having a couple on hand for very small areas or hard to reach spots at least, they're an order of magnitude easier to use than anything involving a brush and the ink should last fine.

[Gaetan Bordeleau]

For the black wales, there are many solutions:

 

Ebony, nothing matches the look and the feel of this wood but the extra fine dust penetrates everywhere.

 

Leather dye

India ink

Saman  water based wood stain black.

 

Different results with the camera.

On the picture, ebony and dye and ink

[vossiewulf]

3 hours ago, SpyGlass said:

I have some black strip coloured right through in my wood box - always wondered what it was -its not ebony.

 

https://modelshipworld.com/index.php?/topic/8650-hm-schooner-pickle-by-spyglass-caldercraft-164-scale/&do=findComment&comment=441220

 

I thought I had it from my Unicorn build many years ago.  Do they not include black strip any more - or have I got the kit I got it from wrong ?

No way to tell what it is with that small image.

 

But short version is if it has some lighter creamy streaks and feels like cutting sandstone with an edge tool, it's probably real ebony. If not, it's just one of many species that can be "ebonized" or dyed black, but I've never been certain what they use. But it goes all the way through solid black everywhere so I assume real dye and soaked in said dye for a long time.

[vossiewulf]

BTW the sponge eye makeup brushes worked extremely well for India ink. And in fact since they leave no brush marks at all, I'm going to try using them for non-precision hand-painting, looks to me like they will leave very flat coats in about any brushable liquid paint/dye.

[Jim Rogers]

I use Ebony wood stain and it is beautiful. Stays under steam where I have had paint removed when steaming.

 

[wefalck]

I bought some of those eye make-up sponges quite a while ago, but never had an occasion to really use them. However, I have used their larger brothers a lot for domestic DIY purposes and they work very well, particularly with acrylics, where you don't have a lot of time to equalise out brush-strokes.

[piratepete007]

On ‎4‎/‎3‎/‎2017 at 1:12 PM, JohnB40 said:

Hello to all,

I have decided to paint the wales on my Unicorn build matt black They look odd being natural walnut as is the rest of the hull,with black upper works. I have given the hull a coat of WOP (non acrylic) about a year ago to seal it (painfully slow build progress). I never have much luck brushing on acrylics,so I bought some Billings Boats enamel paint and thinners. I have lightly sanded the wales with #400 and would appreciate any hints about painting over WOP. Will enamel adhere to this finish ok in the long term? I plan to thin the enamel and multi coat. Any suggestions paint to thinners ratio?  I will be using Tamiya masking tape to mask the wales. Is there is a better tape to use to prevent bleeding under the tape even with burnishing? A lot questions I know,but I have been staring at this for a while and can't seem to get on with it for fear of making a mess.....Thanks for any tips.

In regards to the last question, I have used automative tape that auto sprayers place on vehicles when separating different colors. It is not expensive, can be purchased from auto supply places and comes in various widths. The one I use is only 6.5 mm wide. When pressed down firmly, the result is superb and no bleeding occurs.

 

Pete