Houston, We Have...Yellow Things!

Please forgive my lack of enthusiasm, but...

OMIGAWD!!!  I ACTUALLY PAINTED SOMETHING!!!
YIKES!  YIPPEE!!!  YAHOO!!!

And it's real shiny and pretty!

Ahem...we now return to our regular programming...









A Much Needed Shot of Encouragement  

 While my enthusiasm for the project has been falling off badly as I finish-sand the last items...the wheels...my precious husband has spent the last week or so building me a painting booth inside the shop.

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He is visually impaired, with advanced macular degeneration but his cleverness cannot be defeated.  He produced this gorgeous clean room, which includes intake and exhaust fans, and a zippered door (repurposed from a Shelter Logic building) over the period of about a week and a half.

And then he was done.

And then I had to paint




And I don't mind telling you, the idea of "shifting gears" into paint mode was about as appealing as going to my own execution.  That's how tired I've gotten of the project.  But quite frankly, I've no time to waste.  I can't commandeer this space forever, and I have only about 2-3 months at most to get this thing painted.

So I Got Started...

 With one exception, the surfaces on this carriage are all fairly narrow, with some of them hard to reach with a full sized gun, so I pulled out this handy little Badger detail gun, which I'd purchased unused/new on eBay a couple years ago.    It has an 8 oz cup, and the medium sized needle and tip are miniscule compared to a relatively fine tip on the big production guns.

I mixed my paint.  Since I am very paint challenged, knowledge wise, I've opted to use the old style brushable/sprayable enamel.  Modern auto type catalyzed paints are way beyond my ken, so I just slog along.  I wanted to use Schwartz buggy paint, which I know to be wonderfully shiny.  Their yellows are too mustard-y for me, so I experimented mixing white and yellow and came up with a shade I liked.

Then I had to thin it.  I used Naptha, which is a little faster drying than mineral spirits/paint thinner.  I thinned it to run through a Ford #4 viscometer in about 28 seconds.  I think 25 seconds may be a little better for the wee gun.  Modern paints tell you EXACTLY how to thin.  Old style paints are strictly seat-of-the-paints.  But one of the advantages of using them is that you can brush a section requiring touch up in the future.  I mixed 1 1/2 gallons of yellow, and put it up in quart cans, with one quart for thinning in a gallon can.

I didn't try this product on the first parts in the brand new paint booth, but I did after opening the booth to take out the first parts.

Would you believe, I left that zippered door open for ten minutes to remove the parts, and no less than three flies violated my no-fly-zone air space!

Things didn't go well for those flies.

Finally the moment of truth arrived and dreading a crappy outcome, I actually couldn't believe what a beautiful, shiny coat of enamel that little gun laid down on my carefully prepared surfaces!

Badger does not make the detail gun any longer, but DeVilbiss makes a carbon copy of it.

For the two bolsters and the singletree, I used about 4 ounces of paint, half the volume of the paint cup.

These parts have been hung carefully to cure while I paint more parts.  Everything will have to be delicately wet sanded between coats of paint, and the paint must be thoroughly dry before sanding.  With luck I should be finished sanding the second wheel this afternoon, so that two wheels can go in the booth.  I will paint everything, including wheels, body and seat, before we have to move the turntable jig in for the gear and shafts, as once that big rig is in the booth, it's not coming back out until the job is done.

Some Thoughts on All This Work...

This restoration has been going on for a full year now, and will creep on for several more months.  Hobbies sometimes have to stand in line for time share.

The question is, is all the finish work worth it?

Here is the bolster which is pictured at the top of this post, in its original condition.

Here it is stripped, in all its oaken glory.  Oak has very prominent grain and if that's what you want to show through your paint, that's fine.  But if you are looking for the "lacquered music box" look, you have to go through the sequences of surface preparation that have been outlined in this blog or you will see every bit of grain under the paint, that you see in the bare wood.

Color coats are VERY unforgiving.  All the work of the last year has led up to that shiny bolster in the top picture.

I don't know just how well this comparison is going to come out - you might want to double click on the image for detail.  This is the upper half of the left hand bolster, the one that got a half inch thick addition glued to the top to make it the same height as the right hand bolster.  This is the outer surface, the one that will show..

...versus the inner surface, which won't show.  I did not do all the grain filling on this side, which will be directly underneath the carriage body, facing inboard.  The addition on the top of the bolster is quite clearly visible.

So, y'know, I could have been done with the project months ago, if the finish didn't matter that much to me.  But it does.  It's a personal best.

And today, I can happily say that as many times as I've stopped myself from saying, "that's good enough," it's been worth every minute.