Saturday 10 January 2015

New signs for an old garage...

I am sticking like glue to my decision to not do customer work at weekends.  Even on a freezing day like today, I resolved to stay indoors and if I went in the workshop it would still be stuff for me that I did.  Then I got comfy and played some cards with the grandchildren....you know how it is.

Then, that appalling piece of corn who really should be pensioned off, Harry Hill, came on and I had to make my excuses and leave the room or the flat screen would soon have been considerably flatter.

I've had some prints of garage signs from my son for a while. I got them off the net, but he had to do the compiling and printing.  I don't even have a printer and have no idea how to do compiling.
Anyway, I thought it was time to get them on the old garage model that's been kicking around for ages.
So I started by cutting them out and spray gluing them to some 10 thou. styrene.  Then I gave them a sealing coat of Mr. Hobby UV Cut Flat, the best spray matt varnish I've ever used. Stupid name, but wonderful stuff.  Once that had set, I scraped some of it and the print away to get small areas of scaly rust, which I touched in with a couple of browns from Vallejo.
This was an excuse to try out my new coffee grinder for making my own powders.  Why on earth does anyone waste time and money with all the ready made stuff, when all they are, are ground chalk pastels?  Been doing that for decades.  But in a coffee grinder, the pastel turns to something approaching smoke and takes about half an hour to settle.  I only had a dark grey pastel handy so whizzed that up and when settled poured it via a folded bit of gloss paper into an old spice jar for safe keeping.  A slight flickinf some of the powder over the signs' brighter areas took the new look off them.
More spray glue fixed the signs to the building and that was it.  When I have some more colours I'll touch up the attachment areas, as they will have been there for years.  Odd bits of greens round the edges, that sort of thing and a wee streak off the edges on the underlying brickwork.

Anyway, I'm very pleased with them.  Long overdue.  I do think people sometimes overdo the weathering thing and so these are obviously old but not wrecked.  I have some original enamel signs on my shed and they're like new!  But then, I do wax them...more than my car!



4 comments:

  1. The old garage is coming on well! I agree that it is best not to overdo the weathering.

    Regards, Lloyd.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks, Lloyd. After 25 odd years it's about time.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Some nice work there, Martin. I have a couple of models that have been sitting round for 25 years plus without being finished...there is something very satisfying about picking them up again and working on them, especially when they are as good as this, which mine are not :-)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Go on, I bet they are!
    But yes, I am determined to get this finished and on a base.

    ReplyDelete