Repair
After leaving the ruined pieces in windex for 2 days, I decided it was time to check on them.
The red layer and the chrome layer seemed to have come off but the black primer was being very stubborn.
If you're wondering if it smelled as bad as it looked... it was way worse. Ammonia is awful.
I tried scratching off the black primer and it came off without too much resistance but it didn't seem like it wasn't gonna be removed without some manual work.
So I grabbed some low grit sandpaper and started scrubbing...
After working on two pieces, I realized this was heading towards where we went with Wing Zero Custom. I had to find a better way...
Say hello to my little friend:
99% isopropyl alcohol.
Of course I figured 99% might be a tad bit too strong so I tried diluting it a bit by mixing in some water. I then dunked in the pieces into the bath of diluted alcohol and left them for about 30 minutes. Here were the results:
I later learned that the Vallejo gloss black primer I was using was not the usual water based acrylic paint used by most other Vallejo products. In fact, this particular primer was polyurethane based acrylic, which takes longer to fully cure but cures much stronger than its water based counterparts. This was why it took so much more effort to remove it.
Since we are now back to the beginning, I figured I'd use this chance to attempt to fix up the shoulder wings one more time.
This time, I had super glue so I used it to fill in the gaps that had unwanted scratches. After the glue cured, I went on and sanded them down again.
And then I re-scribed the panel lines one more time...
Note that the little black marks are old scratches that were filled in with transparent glue so they were still visible but were smooth to the touch.
Primed it one more time to see if they look good...
Aaaaand I think we're good.
Masking
This time around, I had a few tricky masking challenges.
The first one I tackled was the machine gun barrel.
My goal here is to color in the connecting plate in the center of the barrel and base area into a darker color. I started out by cutting out thin long strips to cover the barrels. I then used smaller strips to cover the intersections of the barrel and the center plate.
I had to take extra caution to push in the tape into grooves between the barrels so that the paint does not seep through. I did this by carefully using a wooden toothpick while making sure not to poke holes into the tape.
The next tricky challenge was the shoulder verniers. Previously, I painted the entire piece chrome but I wanted to only leave the chrome color on the actual verniers and not the rest of the piece.
For this, I used some masking tapes designed for curved surfaces and covered up the outer rims of the verniers.
To make sure the inside was also covered, I used some generic masking tape (the cheap stuff) to create cones and cover off the tips of the verniers.
Airbrushing
I used gunmetal color to paint over the masked pieces.
Peeling off masking tape is always exciting and nerve wracking at the same time.
The barrel came out nicely. I did notice little bit of paint did still seep into the grooves between the barrels but it was so small that it gave it a nice panel line/shading texture.
The verniers also came out very nicely too. If there was one flaw, it was that the gunmetal color came out way too bright so that there wasn't a strong contrast with the chrome color of the verniers. This was because the gunmetal layer went over the chrome layer instead of a glossy black layer so it did not have the darker tone seen in the other pieces with gun metal. In any case, I was still very happy with the outcome of these particular pieces.
Panel Lining
Some of the pieces that needed panel lines colored in had their clear top coat cured enough to start enamel wash.
I took some enamel black paint and thinned it in lighter fluid. I then took the thinned paint and dropped a few drops into the grooves of the pieces I want to color in the panel lines.
Once the enamel paints dried, I took my panel line eraser (basically a firm sponge on a stick - can use a q-tip instead too), dipped it in lighter fluid, and started wiping away the excess enamel paint.
This must have been the most clean enamel wash I've done so far. I'm really starting to love this. Perhaps I should start looking into doing this more instead of the risky masking acrobatics I always do.
Today I Learned
- Need to double check the chemical composition of paint I am using and adapt accordingly
- Polyurethane acrylic paint melts well with isopropyl alcohol
- Polyurethane acrylic paint is resistant to ammonia based windex
- Even darker metallic colors like gunmetal looks better if I take the time to put a glossy black base coat underneath
