Yeah man~ the fitting look great!

This is what happens when you repaint the black portion of your Shay with flat black, and then
go to seal it with Dull cote, but accidentally grab a can of gloss that you don't remember ever buying.



It explodes!!!!





.LOL!


Not only is it really shiny...... BOOOO!

But its kinda thick. Thick looking anyway and I don't want to lose any detail.

Fortunately it was still only mocked up and it was only a matter of removing a few more screws to have it disassembled to this point.
Then I used my secret weapon which I purchased from a friend a couple years ago who needed to upgrade to a larger unit.



No.

Its not the robot from lost in space.

Yes O-Be-Won, I have my own BLASTER.





I never tried it on plastic before and was thrilled to learn it works great without chewing it to H E double hockey sticks!

Good to know!

Ill have to see how it weathers strip wood! lol

Get the ok from your parents to view this cause its N a k e d.










Well it WAS!

It has a fresh coat of primer and is drying as I type this.

OK, I need to go get some materials, I built a spray booth a while
ago and its sitting useless as I need to vent it.

Later,
Dave

Well that really turned out nice!!

I thought everyone had a sand blaster like that at home!! NOT!!
Now I know where to send those parts that I need the paint removed from instead of throwing them away!!

I guess buying that blaster came in real handy.
It did a good job of removing all the previous paint.

Dave that turned out really well; nice job. You may want to throw that can of 'shiny stuff" in the trash. Lol.

Its nice to have the right equipment for the job, Dave!

Dave,

Your blaster did a fine job. Are there different abrasive powders depending on the material it's used on?

Mike

Hi everyone.

Rick the blaster did Great! I've used it on brass before but never white metal and plastic.
I'm extremely happy about the results on that stuff.

Larry, I didn't toss it, but now it has GLOSS written on the label in black marker.

Bruce, it sure is, I'm lucky I stopped by his place that day.

Mike, I'm sure the abrasive is available in a variety of coarseness.
This stuff is between sugar and dried casting sand.
I stuck with what he was using as he knows what's what when it comes to these things.
Plus he gave me a 3/4 full 5 gallon pail of fresh stuff for it.



While I had it in the raw, I decided to reroute the exhaust pipe, and the air tank aka make new ones.
I have always planned to add the collars on the other pipe, but figured now would be the best time
to get that reworked. Besides I didn't bother taping off the builders plates and there was no longer anything to see there.

I painted the boiler body with flat black rattle can auto primer as I normally do, then I did the
smoke box and firebox sides with Vallejo Air Oily Steel with my air brush.

After that, I grabbed my now CLEARLY MARKED can of Dull Cote and sealed everything.

As that dried, I looked at some photos of jimmy Booths work on some photos of his stuff for PBL.

Now I know darned well I'm no Jimmy Booth, but you may as well study someone who's work you greatly admire.
I love how he does the dark and light see through exhaust stains on the smoke stacks.
I don't know how he does it but I tried how I THINK he did it.

I have some artist oils but don't have the patients to wait for it to dry.
I do however have a tube of raw umber in the water based stuff.

I used Model Power gray black for the dark soot and the raw umber for the translucent stains
so if I hated it, I could wipe it off.
Its no where near what he does, but I don't hate it.

After that was done and it dried, I would normally dry brush the whole thing with Sandstone craft paint.

This time I wanted to push myself a little ( Now that I know I can strip it all away and start over).

So, I loaded my airbrush with a mix I made in a small cup, and of course tested first.

I used Vallejo Air US Arena sand with airbrush thinner and flow improver.

Turning down the pressure and setting my trigger stop to a light mist,I over sprayed just about everything.


This is where I am now. Mocked up with lots to go........






















The over spray dulled down the soot stain, but I can redo that easy enough.
Not Jimmy, but I'm pretty pleased with the effort.

I see I have a broken handrail stanchion, I think I have some spares off that other cab.


Cheers everyone!

Dave

Wow fantastic mistake!

Dave, that blaster really did the trick. Looking good! ~mike

Dave looks really good!! Sometimes "happy accidents" are often times the best.

Beautiful job Dave!!

Excellent!!

Dave, it looks great, love those natural colors of metal... Excellent work for sure'..????✔

that is a chunky looking beast. I once took the climax smokebox front and used it to roll a new boiler to make a bigger looking shay as well.

This is not a nitpick but i hope to be constructive input, but that pipe that comes out of the steam dome should go to the cylinders. The way you have that pipe running you are sending live steam right to the smoke stack. You could leave it and most people won't care. On a standard shay the steam goes from the steam dome to the block that the top of the cylinders is mounted to, then there is a second pipe that goes from the same block down to the lower side of the smokebox (sometimes in the lower side, and sometimes down around to the very bottom center). If the shay is superheated then the steam pipe (actually pipes) are inside the boiler and exit the smokebox where you have yours and goes back on the outside the boiler (like you have yours) but it goes to the cylinder block and then from the cylinder block back to the side of the smoke box at about the 7 oclock position.

if you remove that pipe section that goes up to the steam dome and run your pipe to the cylinder block, then add another pipe under it going back to the smokebox it give you the opportunity to make it even more bulky. if you do add that second lower pipe it would have a damper assembly that is used to open and close an internal damper on the boiler tubes. Those dampers have a cool little flag to tell the engineer what the position of the damper is.

nice work, it is good to see that building stuff is alive and well.