My Badger is dead, long live Badger

Final post of the day and a sad announcement - my trusty Badger 150 died couple of days ago. Or, if I am to be perfectly honest, I probably 'killed' it myself with my slightly obsessive insistence to keep it very clean. Although I won't swear that this is actually what happened, I probably busted the needle bearing by ramming in the cleaning brush all the way through the length of the airbrush. This action (done repeatedly on several occasions) most probably dislodged or damaged the needle bearing, a small teflon packing ring, presence of which I was happily unaware of. As it turns out, it has a couple of rather important tasks, all of them vital for the airbrush staying in serviceable order.

The first indications of the problem occurred quite a while ago, when I found that paint has spread along the whole length of the needle. This is apparently not supposed to happen, as the needle bearing is supposed to keep the paint from 'wandering' back into the airbrush. So, if you find that your needle is covered in paint, you have a problem.

Happily unawares of the budding problem, I continued to use the airbrush without any noticeable problems until last week when I worked on the interior of the Junkers. The airbrush acted 'funny', but I accounted it to my difficulty with mixing the paint of proper consistency. Once done, I cleaned the airbrush in my usual manner... yes, that's right, the cleaning brush was yet again rammed into the airbrush body. Final flush with water served as undeniable evidence of the fact that the Badger had had it - flow of the spray was interrupted by what I can only describe as a 'hickup' before resuming for a second or two... then another 'hickup' and so on...

Having no idea what was going on, I asked Google for help and after a couple of minutes found Don's Airbrush Tips page. Thank you sir for a very valuable source of information about airbrushes, but even more important for your section about troubleshooting of problems with them. On this page, I found a link to this very informative movie, which described the symptoms I was experiencing to a tee and gave me the most probable cause of the problem. Sorry for not embedding the movie in the post, Blogger refuses to find it in its list of Youtube movies. (????)

The brush is now sent to the shop I purchased it from and getting the blown bearing replaced and work on Junkers had come to a grinding halt. Thinking definitely about a backup airbrush; if you have any comments about about the Iwata Neo? :)

Academy Models P-47D Thunderbolt - Part III

So... with the airplane body put together, primed and pampered to the smoothness level same as that of a toddler's behind, I was ready to turn plastic into pure aluminium... or at least give it that desired bare metal-finish! Alclad2 Airframe Aluminium bottle was firmly shaken, its magic... eh, I mean metal particle were agitated. The paint was poured into the paint container of my trusty Badger 150 and I nervously pressed down its trigger.

I've read in one of the articles dealing with Alclad2 lacquers that one was supposed to keep the first coat very light, let it dry and then apply the second, final coat after 10-15 minutes. Well, I don't know if I should call my first pass with the airbrush as very light, after all my control of the airbrush is still rather hamfisted. Still, I was quite pleased with myself once I was finished - first signs of very nice metallic look were clearly visibile. And those scratches and small spatter dropplets would surely be covered by the final coat.

Well... once I was done with the second, heavier coat, four facts became visible to me, and I don't mean metaforically; they were really visble. First and foremost, my polishing of the the primer left a lot to be desired and resulted in a very uneven finish of the metallic paint. Second, any scratches on primed surface are 'reproduced' on the metallic surface. Third, airbrush spatter dropplets will not be covered by the subsequent lacquer coats. Fourth, working with Alclad2 isn't as easy as they want to make you believe!

In vain hope that the rather unpleasing finish would be improved with additional coats of Alclad, I sprayed on both a third and fourth coat within 24 hours of each other. Parts of the airplane where the primer was properly smoothed took on a very pleasing aluminium shine, but those with a bit rougher initial finish remained grayish and less shiny. Additional coats had no effect on scratches and spatter spots. In a final desperate effort, I sprayed two light coats of Alclad gloss varnish, hoping that its uniform shine would even things out - that step helped a little in respect of overall finish, but I was still not very pleased with final result.

I admit that I was very tempted to take the easy way out, grab the Aluminium spraycan from Tamiya and spray it over the unsatisfactory Alclad. However, not knowing how the two paints would react with each other - after all, Alclad is a lacquer and God only knows what content of Tamiya's brush cans is really based on (I'm pretty sure though that it isn't a purely acrylic). More importantly though, the mishap with Alclad was an honest mistake and part of a learning  process. So, better to keep the 70 percent satisfactory job for future reference and hopefully as bottom of measuring stick of future improvement.

Pictures below (in pairs) show the model after first, second and final coat with Alclad's gloss varnish on top.