About Me

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London, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
A mythical beast - a female wargamer! I got back into wargaming in the summer of 2011 after a very, very long break and haven't looked back since. I must admit that I seem to be more of a painter/collector than a gamer, but do hope to correct that at some point in the near future. My gaming interests span the ages, from the "Biblical" era all the way through to the far future. I enjoy games of all sizes, from a handful of figures up to major battles (see my megalomaniacally sized Choson Korean and Russian Seven Years War armies).

Monday 24 August 2015

Road-Sweeper Day Four

No progress on the road-sweeper today, I'm sad to report. Partly because I've been doing other things and partly because I wanted to read up on different "chipping" techniques. I think I'll probably go with the salt method. Tomorrow looks as though it's going to be a busy and slightly messy day.

My experiment on the cars with acrylic inks didn't work out. The inks were just too thin for use on a non-absorbent surface, and the cars suffered from pooling when I did the second, darker colours:




So, back into the stripping jar they went. Recently I've been watching a few YouTube vids from people who do custom paint jobs on Hotwheels type cars, and a lot of them seem to use Createx paints. I knew that London Graphics Centre sold these, and that they come in opaque, transparent, pearlescent and fluorescent colours (plus, I've since discovered, iridescent ones too). So, this morning I headed into town to get a few to try out.

On the way back home, I thought I'd take a look in the Sainsburys at Harringay. I needed to get some groceries anyway, and there was always a chance I'd find some of the Hotwheels cars I'm looking for. I'd forgotten there was a Poundland next door to it, so I popped in to see if they had any. And boy, did they. Well, not so much the Hotwheels, but they had the motherlode of Corgi Racers - there must have been twenty or thirty of each of the 8 "Grid B" cars. I'd been after a few more of some of them to round out sets so I picked up the ones I wanted. I also picked up a few Hotwheels and some gems/beads in the craft section.

Naturally, I was so taken with my finds and the potential of the Motherlode that I completely forgot to go into Sainsburys!

Anyway, here are the purchases:

All the lootz
Gems and beads - these will do nicely for spikes and mines
The Hotwheels - yes, that is 5 "Pass 'n Gassers" you see there :)
A few Createx paints
The Corgi Racers
The new models
So, three new models - a Corgi GT convertible; a Custom '12 Ford Mustang; and a '83 Chevy Silverado. As the last is a (pick-up) truck, that's two new car models, taking my count to 22 new car models; 2 left on my allowance.

While I was trying to find out exactly what car models the Corgis are meant to be (unsuccessfully, I might add), I discovered that they seem to go on Ebay and Amazon for quite a bit more than the £1 I paid for them - anywhere from £5 to £10 for "mint in pack" (possibly more per car for complete sets). I'm half tempted to go back to that Poundland and buy up all their stock - 200-odd cars at £4 mark-up would be a tasty profit (and would cover the costs of all the cars I've already bought)! The only thing stopping me is the thought of all the admin...

As I haven't used the Createx paints before, I thought it would be a good idea to test them out to see how they flow and what pressure I'd need to use for airbrushing them. Before doing that, I took the two test cars out of the stripper, scrubbed them, rinsed them and let them dry for a couple of hours before giving them a coat of white primer.

My tests with the paints went well, It looks as though they will all run through my Neo (0.3mm needle) at 10-15 psi, although the pearlescent gold did seem a bit "sticky". There were no problems with any of them in my Revolution (0.5mm needle).

Once the testing was done, I sprayed the two test cars with a basecoat of pearlescent gold:


At this point I came to the conclusion that I'd have been better off priming them black - it was hard to see if anything was going onto the cars. I was using the Neo at this point, so some of that might have been due to "sludging" in the nozzle. In a couple of places, I ended up with streaking as a result.

The one problem I have found with the Createx paints is the bottles they come in - the plastic is fairly hard, so it is difficult to squeeze out drops into the airbrush cup. I might need to transfer some into polypropylene dropper bottles for easier handling during sessions.


7 comments:

  1. I'm sorry to hear that the inks didn't work out. I was keen to see that effect on the cars.I do want to see how the salt technique works for chipping as I've been looking at that and at the hairspray method.

    If you don't stop shopping we'll have to stage in intervention :0)

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  2. Fabulous, I just keep shopping, shop, shop, shopping!

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  3. And there was me thinking I had a problem with buying new toys ... :)

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  4. @ Anne - well, that's what experiments are for - to find out what works and what doesn't. Luckily the paints are much better. As for the flames, I need to get some masks/stencils - this is just to work up the flame colours.

    @ PapaSpanky - possibly, but with 4 or 5 per base it shouldn't be too many :)

    @ Michael A - indeed :)

    @ cmnash - buying new toys is a problem? :)

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    1. hmmm .... well now that you question it, I'm not that convinced! ;)

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    2. hmmm .... well now that you question it, I'm not that convinced! ;)

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