Model Train Journal

I'm starting this thread as an educational service. There are a few products out there that absolutely disgust me - and I'm naming names.

Rustoleum - they seem guilty of a number of sins:

• Full size cans of paint that CLOG easily - I don't know about you, but I'm thoroughly pissed off at paying $8-14 for a can of paint that clogs after the 2nd use. I've trying cleaning the nozzle, soaking it, standing it on its head with little to no success.
• Acquiring Testors and killing off ModelMaker
• Raising prices on microscopic quantities of paint

What are your brands or products to avoid?

George

Yeah, I've had the same experience with clogging, but not just with Rustoleum; there have been similar issues with Krylon and a few of the house brands. For models, I pretty much use Tamiya exclusively...never had a clogging issue with that stuff (of course now, thanks to the douche in Washington, it will cost $20 for a small can). As far as the ModelMaster series, I thought one of the iterations prior to Rustoleum's ownership was responsible for killing off that line of paints. That was disastrous for us in the armor and model aircraft hobby. Whatever, Tamiya remains a good alternative, although somewhat short of MM's spectrum of colors.

A real gripe for me is LocTite spray adhesive. You're lucky to get three or four shots from a can of that before the nozzle becomes hopelessly fouled. Of course, shooting glue through a spray nozzle is intuitively an issue, lol, but still annoying. The Elmers stuff doesn't seem to clog, but then the quality of the adhesive is somewhat less satisfactory.

There are probably other things, but that's my primary gripe du jour.

How about a package so hard to open. That when it finally does. Your product flies out and hits the ground.

I gotta say that a lot of model railroader woes are self-inflicted, and this is one. Using a rattle-can for model building is like washing the baby's arse with a six-inch firehose.

Rattle cans were great (no, they sucked then, now that I think about it) in the 1960s maybe, but they have looooong ago been passed by for model building by better methods that model railroaders, being some of the most culturally staid, insular, and backwards-arse modelers I've ever seen, refuse to evolve and embrace.

For the price of two or three rattle cans you can pick up a decent Paasche H airbrush off eBay and actually use a tool suited to purpose rather than slobbering paint out of a spit-can intended to paint your lawn furniture or a toolbox, not a model. You'll find those miniscule bottles will actually cover more than a can per unit, saving money. You'll find you can actually control the spray into reverse corners and over tiny details, your coats are nice and thin, the risk of runs and spatters goes away, and the amount of overspray wastage is next to nothing.

The excuse I hear most often is, "The airbrush needs cleaned at the end and its just easier to use a rattle can." Well, if you can't be bothered to spend five minutes cleaning up your tools, you deserve the clogs, spatters, runs, wastage, and hideous expense of these self-contained snot-slingers. It baffles me why someone would take a rattle can to something they spent hundreds of dollars or hundreds of hours on because its too much effort to unscrew a nozzle and needle from the front of their airbrush and chuck it in a jar of thinner.

No sympathy for complaining about something so completely ill-suited to purpose as a rattle-can when just a little bit of effort gets you a far far better way of doing something.

Talking of making things because neanderthal model railroaders still demand it, why do they still make Walthers Goo? That Spunk of Satan is laughably obsolete and horrible for purpose compared to any number of modern adhesives. But, the stuff everyone else in the model building world has learned to use and embraced isn't even known to our world. Go to an IPMS show, stay silent but with ears open, and look at what they use, how they use it, and what result they get. It's a fantastic learning experience!

I'll say one of the worst downsides of hobby-shopping on the internet and at scale-specific meets/shows is you don't get to walk over to the other side of the brick-n-mortar shop and actually see what the plastic modellers and the R/C guys are working with. So many fantastic tools, adhesives, and paint-ranges we have no clue about in our insular Cellars of Arrested Development! GRIN!

And another thing, since my trigger got tickled, what about Model Master? Same with Floquil and Scalecoat. If you are sworn to solvent paints, learn to use TruColor. It's nice stuff, freshly made, available, and (if you are into this mind-set) worth supporting. Yet model railroaders will bitch about the price, then go out on ebay and spend $60 on an old bottle of Floquil Engine Black because they just can't move on. Maybe the thread should be called, "You can't Fix Stupid!"

PS: If you're offended and pissed at this point, know that this is offered for you to smile and think outside our little world a bit. Like many things in this day and age, the amount of offence taken is inversely proportional to the willingness to learn new shit.

Same experiences here. I don’t use Krylon or Rustoleum on train projects but have learned to remove the nozzle right after using them and put them in lacquer thinner and blow them out with air hose. Helps anyway. I use Tru Color and found slow dry lacquer thinner works. Medium dry like Hardware store Klean Strip dries too fast. Jeff has slow dry over at his place. And yeah, plastic packaging can be a PITA. Lastly just about anything Lionel has made in the past 15 years. Most poorly designed for service. Anyone try to separate a China drive motor from a Diesel truck? Most everyone else uses a single screw easily accessable, Lionel uses a half dozen and some can only be accessed from the top, barely. Zero info for their own service centers.

Pete

Oh, yeah. Try using your airbrush to paint or spring touchup garden furniture. Or the water pump lower shield on your flathead Ford.
Soaking nozzles works pretty good with Krylon, but Rustoleum clogs at or below the valve. Inaccessible.
Krylon tends to clog halfway through a job. Nozzle. I keep old nozzles soaking, sometimes 4 nozzles later I might get done.
10-15 years ago, never had this problem. PRC-made garbage?

ScaleCraft wrote:Oh, yeah. Try using your airbrush to paint or spring touchup garden furniture. Or the water pump lower shield on your flathead Ford.

Why the hell would I do that any more than I'd spraypaint a model with a rattle can or brushpaint it with a housepainter's brush? It's called using the right tool for the job at hand and not blaming the tool when you don't.

ScaleCraft wrote: PRC-made garbage?

No, it's the whinging when a little plastic part doesn't self-clear and gets clogged when the paint invariably dries in it because that is what paint does. Not only can you adjust the nozzle and needle in an airbrush to get a controlled flow pattern, but (will wonders ever cease) you can blow thinner through the dam thing to clean it when you're done and you can take it apart to clean the bits if it clogs. Pick it up again and it works every time. Wow!

Use the right tool for the job or lower your expectations. GRIN!

Apparently you've never experienced a new can of Rustoleum, not previously used, clogging internally 15-20 seconds in, even after the proscribed period of shaking!

I was trying to address the original poster's concerns, with actual/factual experience.

I've not, probably because the last Rustoleum rattle-can paint I used was painting a set of Craftsman toolboxes years ago. If I start a can and don't finish it, I chuck it anyway simply because there is no way to clean the little plastic POS nozzle when I'm done. It's gonna clog. Inevitably. It's not even intended for model use; its household aerosol paint from bloody Walmart!

I won't use the stuff in modelling; lost too many plastic models and had to strip too many metal ones when the dam thing spattered everything and clogged to a halt. They clogged after two minutes back then and I'm not surprised to hear they still do. I've also seen and stripped far too many broom and hose paint jobs on models to ever ever use a snot-can of household paint on anything smaller than lawn furniture.

That is also intended to address the OP's initial complaint. Yes, spray-bombs are unpredictable, uncontrollable, expensive, and not at all suited to this purpose, and not just Rustoleum (though they might be the worst; George seems to think so.) So why insist on using them when there are better, controllable, reliable, cleanable, and less expensive methods out there, rather then merely complain about 'em?

An' that's enough from me on that!

I have used a couple of rattle cans with good results. PJ1 makes a line of paints that can be found in motorcycle shoos as well as online. I have used their gloss black and satin black. Gloss black on motorcycle frames as its almost as tough as Imron. Can be used prior to decaling too. Satin black is a close match for post war satin and what I use for restorations.



https://www.amazon.com/PJ1-16-SAT-Satin ... r=8-6&th=1

Recently started using SEM urethane on models including a KTM NYC K5 Pacific. Some body shops use it. Its a direct to metal paint, no primer needed. Best use with their other products. I used a gloss on the cab and tender prior to decaling and then their satin clear over everything.

https://www.amazon.com/SEM-Black-Ultra- ... T6SK&psc=1

https://ogrforum.com/topic/3-railing-a- ... k5-pacific

Pete

Tend to agree with Sarge. I’ve never really been disappointed in my airbrush results yet highly disappointed in rattlecan results. However I find turning the rattle can on end and spraying tends to pro long the clogging of the tip.
As for the air brush it’s pretty easy to clean, I think the biggest challenge is getting the paint thinned just right so it doesn’t clog while spraying

I’d like to find a cyanoacrylate glue that lasts a reasonable amount of time before drying up.

gregj410 wrote:I’d like to find a cyanoacrylate glue that lasts a reasonable amount of time before drying up.

Similar experience with LocTite GO2, my preferred adhesive for a long time. LocTite has since discontinued it, so now I'm using LocTite Extreme glue. Haven't had any clogging problems with that stuff, although it's a bit thicker and more flexible than GO2.

I'm running into more and more folks gluing stuff using common PVA. It never would have occurred to me to, for example, glue metal figures to plastic bases using PVA. I would have thought the stuff would just pop apart, but it doesn't seem to unless you really work at it.

I avoid anything MTH or Atlas Premier with DCS electronics. Watching $300 suddenly go up in smoke is not a hobby for me.

I was taught after use, to turn rattle cans upside down and run a good shot of spray through of them to keep the nozzle clean. That the paint doesn't enter the internal plastic hose thingy when you do this.

LED spots, floods, and table lamp bulbs that fail after less than three years use. Good for 23 years...rubbish.

healey36 wrote:LED spots, floods, and table lamp bulbs that fail after less than three years use. Good for 23 years...rubbish.

That reminds me. Some LED bulbs are not rated for enclosed fixtures. Some LED bulbs cannot even be used upside down (bulb down, screw base up) in an open shade lamp.
Of course, you can use any LED bulb in any fixture, but if it is not used in the type of fixture or orientation specified, don't expect a 23-year life span.

I use normal LED bulbs in my spring-balanced desk lamps.


There is a warning on the lamp itself.


The air flow past the bulb in my desk lamps is the same as in a forbidden recessed luminaire. I don't expect 23 years out of the lamps. The glass part of the one I just photographed was cool to the touch when I removed it for the photograph, while it was lit, but the base was very hot.

The shortest-lived LED bulb I have used in an enclosed outdoor porch light died in a flash. The second LED bulb, out of the four-pack, lasted two hours. That is when I learned about fixture type and orientation limitations of LED bulbs. LED bulbs three and four of the four-pack are in table lamps, base down, with open lamp shades. Those two are still going 17 years later. They are only on at night, 3 or 4 hours at a time.