You're welcome Jesse! Feedback like that keeps me going.
Almost had a major catastrophe. As yesterday's pictures showed, I had the Flare sitting on its base... just sitting, not fastened in any way. I was picking up the distilling tower to paint its railings and something knocked the Flare over. Not just over, but onto the concrete and it took the heater with it. The Flare sustained mild damage with the vertical piping popping out of its pipe supports (CA'd) and the pilot light upper pieces separating. Easy fixes for both. But the heater broke apart at the seam at the base of the transition piece. It also broke the ladder in two at the same point.
It was "almost as catastrophe" since I was able to refit the joint, apply CA and get it back together without any noticeable damage. Whew!
It was storming outside so no further rattle-can painting, but I had plenty to do inside. I started painting railings and ladders with the cooling tower. Painting yellow by hand is one of the worst covering colors in the model paint palate. I did the top rail by hand and started painting the caged ladder. It was a pain in the butt, so I made some paper masks to fit under the ladder to protect the corrugated skin and air brushed the yellow. Much, much better. I even was able to go back and lightly spray the railings to even out the coat. I also mixed up a custom batch of "concrete" color and painted the foundation. I don't know whether or not I will do any weathering on the CT. The picture I have shows a bright shiny new one, and I'd like it to look like that. But I'm sure it gets pretty crumby in service with air and water in close proximity.
Next up was the distilling tower. That was a different story. I really couldn't wrap my head around how to mask it to spray all those details so I hand-painted all the rails and ladders. It was a chore and I'm not totally satisfied. But that's that. I did get some yellow on the metallic, but I'll go back and back paint it with paint decanted from the spray can. The images make the paint look better than it does in the flesh. I want to paint the valve handles red to highlight them.
I painted the heater Tamiya Nato Black from the air brush. It was an easy paint job. I'll mask it and do the ladder with the air brush. Nato Black has a bit of white it in giving it a more natural weathered look.
But the Flare looked like it could be a masking candidate. I was NOT going to hand paint all that caged ladder. So I spent the rest of the afternoon wrapping and taping all the expose silver so I could air brush both the ladders and the rails at one go. It takes a lot longer to mask than to paint.
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Weather tomorrow should be very nice and I'll be able to do more outdoor spraying. I have to do the loading rack and the white work. All the rest of the colors will be water-based paints so I can do them indoor with the airbrush.
