Help! Maintence Team, Help!

OK, so yesterday was another NMRA working bee with me playing Picasso again.  

So I had my paint colours already mixed and ready to spray.  The battery in the Airbrush was fully charged, so I was ready, willing and able.

Yeh....

Right...

So I got a few tracks painted and all was going well.  

The airbrush was going well, sorta.  She would brmmm along happily and every now and then glitch and get temperamental. Bang her a few times and she was good to go again.  But then...  she wouldn't respond to me, no matter what I said to her. A few more bangs and then, nothing - she stopped responding at all - not even a whisper...  Dang.  So a quick cleanup of her and I put her away.  Our host for the day, Paul, had a couple of spare airbrushes fully charged and ready to go, so I got on with the job.

So last night I ordered a new unit, as two is better than one, in particular if that "one" is not working. So after lunch I had a look at the old girl and determined it is the on/off switch at fault. So a lot of mucking around to desolder it and get it out, as it is a very tight fit in there. A look in the web of all things and I can't really find a replacement switch anywhere - bugger!

When I looked at the airbrush, I could see what had happened - paint had run down the side and into the switch - oh no! 

So looking at the switch I can see that it might just be able to be pulled apart. Delicately I handled her and got her apart - yep... paint... over the contacts.  No wonder she was coughing and spluttering at me.

Luckily she can be fully disassembled. So with a small brass wire pencil, I was able to clean all the contacts up.  

Then to reassemble - mightly small hands must make these things and my big man hands had fun and games getting her back together and soldered up ready to go.  But I did it.  

Then the moment of truth... click... brmmmm!  She's alive!  With a nice and consistant brmmm at that.

So some cleaning fluid into the paint cup and away she sprayed - wunderbar :-)

So now I just need to clean the outside a bit to make her shiny again so she will be ready to meet her new companion when she arrives.  I'll then have a pair of girls to do my bidding in the paint department :-)

Splashing Around

So yesterday was a working bee for the NMRA dudes in Brisbane - we went to work on the Free-mo modules that are under construction.

I got dobbed in by my mate Scooter, so I was to be Rembrant for the day, more like Picasso I reckon ;-)

I had come prepared with my gear to be able to lay down some good stuff - I have had a fair bit of practice before on the club layouts at RMCQ.  I was using the nifty battery powered airbrush.

I made sure to bring the USB charging rig for it, as I knew I was going to need to run it past its battery capacity.  It got some short recharges whilst we had coffees and smoko and lunch of course.  But I also ran it with the charger plugged in, perfectly fine.

I had premade my paint for the day to save time, but just in case, I did bring some spare paint and the tools to make up batches of paint for spraying.  I have in the past done a pile of testing of various colour mixes and come up with my recipe.  I use the Tamiya Acrylic paints which are nice to use and not quite water based.  

So I make sure to use their brand of thinners, the X-20A.  Since in the scheme of things not much is used over time for the painting side of things, I buy the proper stuff - cost is fine.  Cleaning is done with water, then IPA.  Then for the airbrush I finish off the cleaning with the proper Tamiya Airbrush Cleaner.

So, the recipe.  I have come up with a recipe of 33% Colour #1, 33% Colour #2 and then 33% Thinners.  The remaining 1% is Aussi Bulldust.  The colours have been tweaked after sitting down over a number of days and days a while back, mixing colours and spraying a test board with scrap track nailed to it.  In this case we are using XF-51 Khaki Brown and XF-68 Nato Brown.

As required, you rinse out the measuring pippet so you can actually read the markings - just a small bucket of water at my side works fine.  Another item to have are Ball Bearings.  Yes, you can throw them at idiots near you, but they are much better for mixing paint.  I use a dozen small 2-3 mm bearings in each bottle, then you can easily shake the bottle and get a good mix. Get them at hobby stores or online.

So you always keep the empty Tamiya paint bottles - as they are very handy to mix paint in and store it.  So you line up a bunch of clean empty bottles and then with a cheap almost disposable pippet (available at hobby stores for about 4 bucks for 10, or online at all the usual cheap Chinese stores), you put in about 3 ml of the first colour, then 3 ml of the second colour and of course the remaining 3 ml of thinners.  The Bulldust goes in as you are speaking to the other numbnuts with you. The amount of bulldust can vary...

Once the mixings are in the bottle, put the lid on and mix it.  You could sit there and shake with your hand for a while, or get lazy and use a mixer.  Again, get the online one for 20 bucks or so - they are Test Tube shakers or Nail Polish shakers.

Leave the ball bearings in the bottle - they only ever come out again when you clean the bottle after finishing it off.  And of course if you are premaking a batch of paints - label the damn things!

There, another 7 bottles ready to use for the next working bee.

Bare bones module with all the track painted and ready for scenery.

A couple of modules almost ready to roll.

See you later - time for another cuppa I reckon, then maybe off to the hobby shop for some more bottles of paint.