The Knack!

For those of a certain age 1979 saw the release of one of  those timeless songs that still gets played repeatedly today. It was by a band called The Knack and the song was My Sharona. See a great live version by clicking here. At the time, The Knack was hailed as the new Beatles. Unfortunately they did not live up to that and as far as I am aware after a few more singles that never got that far in the charts the band faded away.

So what has all this to do with model making. Nothing directly but I am going to talk about 'the knack'. A term that is used in the UK to indicate that you have the ability to do something. Mrs. Woody for example has 'the knack' to find those things you never knew you could live without before finding them on an internet shopping channel. If you make models over many years you do develop 'the knack' with certain methods of doing things or in using certain types of materials. In my case I have developed a certain 'knack' in using an airbrush. Generally the paint goes on without too many disasters. I used to use enamel paints which are an oil based paint. They have good coverage and dry to a high gloss but they take hours to dry, stink of white spirit and it takes an age to clean the airbrush afterwards. However for most of my modelling life enamel paints have been the only accessible paints. Acrylic paints are water based, have little odour, dry quickly and you can clean the airbrush with water. They don't dry to such a gloss as enamels though but all in all I guess are better for the environment and my health!. With the advantages and the increased availability and increased range of products I moved across to acrylics about 15 years ago. It took me some time to learn how to use this new to me paint as they are different to enamels but eventually I got 'the knack'. 

Move onto the Italeri Scania with Cool Fruits trailer that I started to build back in 1999 I did spray the cab back then in Humbrol metallic blue enamel paint. The actual airbrushing was good and the colour looked great but probably because of where I sprayed it the paint was full of dust particles and you could see that in the finished paint. I therefore decided to respray the cab in the same colour and digging through the WMD HQ paint store found several part used as well as new tins of the required original enamel metallic blue paint. I decided to make use of the part used paint which as I will explain was a mistake that I should have avoided. 

The cab was flatted off with some fine wet and dry paper to get rid of the embedded dust.

The parts were then set out for spraying. The problem is that for the last 12 years I have been used to spraying acrylics. Enamels act differently and to be blunt I have lost 'the knack' of spraying these types of paint. The result is not brilliant but probably savable!

What has gone wrong? Well probably using old paint is not the best thing to have done. Old paint in an un-opened tin is one thing and will probably still be good to use but paint that was probably first opened 23 years ago is not going to be in the best condition! Secondly I think looking at the paint on the model that in one of the tins I mixed some silver paint in to give some 'sparkle'! Well I am not sparkling over the finish! Thirdly I probably over thinned the paint when I mixed it for spraying and so it is over transparent and has run in places. So having lost 'the knack' of using enamel paints I will have an opportunity to further re-educate myself as I am going to have to let this paint dry and then try again! So there you have it - not everything goes smoothly (literally with this paint) at WMD HQ!

On another front I can report that the decal paper ordered yesterday has been delivered. As I stated yesterday I have never used this before so I will need to develop 'the knack' of using it!