I post many of my successful projects here, but I am not embarrassed to share some failures, too. Besides, you learn from failures, right? I surely do . .
Anyway, this post has one of each . . . and a summary of lessons learned from the failure.
First, the success - proving tenacity and learning from your mistakes pays off. Shown below is my repainted Hallows Eve Lionel 4-6-0. Same loco as used for Hogwarts - it is a scale British Hall class, and quite a nice little model of a very handsome loco. The Hallows Eve version is quite inexpensive now, no doubt due to its garish orange and black, bat and goblin infested paint scheme. I bought one to re-paint -- actually, I bought two, but that's the story later on . . . First, the success. Both the photo and the video below make the paint look lighter than it is: it is a very deep, dark royal blue. This is the first successful glossy painted loco I have done. The lettering and pinstriping are painted on: I painted the entire loco gold and let that dry 36 hours, then masked the numbers, letters, and trim with vinyl lettering and pinstripe tape, painted the royal blue, and removed the masking while the blue was still wet. I am very pleased with the result. by the way, "GWR" stands for Great Western Railroad. Every loco I repaint is Union Pacific - as is this - UP is the great, western, railroad!
Below is attempt number one. The repainting itself went okay - no drips, no runs, all glossy. But ugh - that color!!!
My first mistake (and biggest lesson learned) was in not recognizing that light colors do not look good in glossy, at least on a model loco. Still, my excuse is that it looked like a good color in the store, and later when I held the cap of the spray can next to the loco. It is/was extremely ugly when done . . . it occured to me that it would look better satin than gloss, so I hit the tender with satin clearcoat - that improved it a bit - in fact it looked okay - not great, but okay. So I did the loco, too. Disaster. It was a 107 degree day outside, my "paint-room" (unairconditioned part of the third floor) was probably at 120 deg. I just forgot . . . and the dullcoat dried in mid air and formed thick, translucent "plasticoat" over the entire top of the loco, as if some alien creature had slimed it in a cacoon.
Other things I learned, or remembered after it was too late:
1) Big lesson: if it's going to be glossy, it needs to be really dark . . .
2) Don't spray paint in really high temperatures (or low)
3) Don't use primer - . . . yeah, I know . . . I really do know -- but instead, experiment on the bottom or on something like it and instead find a paint that works direct. For my first attempt (the loco directly above) I did prime it, quite nicely adn well, and the cast-in detail took a noticeable hit - little detials like rivets and all looked blurred - because of a nice thick primer coat, two coats of glossy paint, etc. Attempt #2 (the success) used no primer and I worked to keep the coats thin as I could . . .
4) Don't use pinstripe tape permanently: unlike the painted gold on the success, the black pinstripes on the light blue loco are pinstripe tape and vinyl letters and numbers applied after the paint dried and intended to stay forever -- they look okay from two or three feet away, and are easy and quick to do, but painted numbers and pinstripes, like those on the successful loco are just much better: the trick with gold first, then masking, etc., is worth the trouble . . . (and it is a lot of trouble).
I really like my second attempt, and not counting the paint, etc., this beautiful little scale Hall class loco cost my only about $260, even though I had to buy two Hallow's Eve locos to get it.
