Does anyone know what color the Williams diesel bodies are before painting? Are the all black bodies "painted" black or is the plastic itself "molded-in" black.
I want to reletter a Williams black body and am hoping all I have to do is remove the current lettering... and not have to repaint the entire body.
Thanks for any info!
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The ones I have stripped were light grey plastic. Thats F3's. You might try lightly scraping the inside of the shell somewhere and see what color plastic you have.
Rob
You can look on the inside of the shell. They're all this color when stripped. Dirty white. This is a Williams GP-38 I stripped. If it's a Williams reproduction shell I would advise being very careful when stripping the shell because the plastic on the repro shells tend to peel like a bad sunburn.
Thomas
You can look on the inside of the shell. They're all this color when stripped. Dirty white. This is a Williams GP-38 I stripped. If it's a Williams reproduction shell I would advise being very careful when stripping the shell because the plastic on the repro shells tend to peel like a bad sunburn.
Thomas
Peels like a bad sunburn? What does that mean?
Robby, what did you use to strip your F3 shells?
Certain plastics will "craze" when incompatible solvents are applied to them. Crazing can be anything from "rippling", "shrinking" "flaking" "distorting" etc.
Apparently the Williams Reproduction Line plastics are susceptible to some of the paint strippers normally being used on plastic.
If it's a Williams reproduction shell I would advise being very careful when stripping the shell because the plastic on the repro shells tend to peel like a bad sunburn.
Peels like a bad sunburn? What does that mean?
It means that at some point Williams change they're plastic composition or plastic forming process for what ever reason and produced a less than desirable product when comparing them to the original run shells. When looking closely at the repros you can see what appears to be fine flaws in the paint. If you take a razor and just flick the flawed paint up a thin skin of plastic will usually peel off with the paint just like peeling sun burnt skin off your arm. Its almost like there were air pockets in the outer layers of the plastic when it was painted. Williams repro shells are easy to identify. They've got sloppy,bumpy paint,usually less than straight lettering and if you look inside there will be a big ugly casting sprue left behind.
Thomas
Certain plastics will "craze" when incompatible solvents are applied to them. Crazing can be anything from "rippling", "shrinking" "flaking" "distorting" etc.
Apparently the Williams Reproduction Line plastics are susceptible to some of the paint strippers normally being used on plastic.
I strongly advise against using any chemical to strip any type of model train wheather it be metal or plastic. When you put any type chemical on a shell you instantly loose control of the project as you have no way of knowing what is happening at any given time. Chemicals are just a wait and see game with bad results more often than not. Blasting is a highly controlled enviroment with superior results if given a shell without plastic deformaties. I've stripped many shells from all makers for forum members here and every last one was absolutely amazed with the level of detail my process offers. Maybe some of those members will chime in here with those results.
Below is a K Line plastic tender before,during and after. Its almost impossible to get these results time and time again using chemicals. No guess work involved in my method just takes a couple minutes in the cabinet. I have a tutorial here somewhere if you search blast cabinet. Remember "chemicals bad" "blast good"
Thomas
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