I've airbrushed Humbrol to my Emhar Mk.IV... but after two days since that, the tracks (and not the rest of the model) keep being sticky to touch. Has anyone had this trouble? Is it going to cure in due time? If not, how to fix this?
It's possible that there are traces of release agent on the vinyl. I would remove the paint with paint thinner, wipe over with isopropanol and try again. Good luck !
I used acryllic paint on my tracks and all is ok, no stickyness. Humbrol is enamel paint and reacts to the softeners in the track material. Oven cleaner spray will also remove Humbrol.
Thanks for the suggestions! Facetiousness aside, as some days passed since I sprayed the Humbrol, the tracks seem to have dried up mch of the stickness. I'll wait a few more days and give them a coat of acrylic matte varnish. Hopefully this shall "stabilize" the surface and prepare it to add a coat of thinned dark metallic grey (boltgun metal from Citadel) and later on a good heavy plastering of "mud" made of matt acrylic medium and ground up pastel chalk. Let's see how it ends up....
-- Edited by d_fernetti on Monday 13th of October 2014 11:26:28 PM
When I was very young, I saw two chaps in the park that had fallen on hard times sucking metho and basso out of hollowed out loaves of bread! They probably didn't last out the year...
The Ehmar's vinyl tracks aren't so bad in size and shape, and very close to the Takom's ones regarding dimensions!
It is possible to improve them with a simple knife, gently opening the space between the links!
Once washed with soap I painted it with both Humbroll enamels ore acrylics.
Regards
Giles(Lostiznaos)
Don't forget to give the tracks a blackish appearance to simulate the hardening process of carburisation. This was achieved by sticking the red-hot track plates in a carbon powder compound and the carbon was absorbed by as much as a third of an inch, causing a black finish on the plates.
Yes, I thought on adding that, but my model (FLIRT II) got so heavily weathered according to photo references that almost no traces of the blackening were visible. I started with a basecoat of thinned "chainmail" Citadel acrylic and several washes of khaki, mud, tears and reg... uh, well some lumpy brownish paint. The final result admittedly shows little of the blackish original track colour, but it does show a pleasant hue of earth and clay, with some patches of metallic gray. My reference for the track appareance was some new pictures I have of steam rollers and tractors that had lots of mud caked in their wheels.
I hope you've been taking loads of photos as the work progresses, Diego, and I hope you'll consider letting us post it up on Landships as a Construction article.
Yes, I promise I'll post photos in a couple of weeks. I promised this build for an Australian modelling group (the Emhar tank was a gift from them!) and they meet to compare the different buuilds next November 8th. I mailed the model itself to the antipodes last week, hoping that it'll arrive there in one piece. If it doesn't appear on the meeting time, or gets damaged on the mail, I'll send them the photos I took before mailing it. Of course, once I shared them I'll post them here. The rules of the build was that it was to be strictly Out of the Box, and it was -for me!- a truly painful process. But it was certainly a change in my glacial modelling pace and I had this tank ready to mail in just 2 weeks from starting it... and in the last week I only had time to weather the tracks a couple of afternoons!
Of course, I have another kit awaiting completion with a full set of replacement pieces, like the stowage box on the roof, erased "little doors" (as the Bovington tank) and I'm currently studying photos to see how to improve those awful awful Emhar beam rails (which with a bit of coaxing, actually fit well).
