The fun is back!

I can’t say everything went smoothly today, but having had some time to put things in perspective about some of the mistake I made so far on this kit and I did get that satisfying feeling back with today’s work.

I will hopefully look back at the FW-190 kit in a while and be happy about the things that have I have learned since then.

After mixing those colors I first sprayed a line on the Spit-Wreck to see what the exact output was.

I first opened this thing a few weeks ago after a my first long airbrushing session. I had read in the manual there was a ‘safety mechanism’ that would let the compressor automatically shut down when it got too hot. I had this weird idea that there would be some complex system behind that, so I kept going for more than 45 minutes when the engine sound starting fluctuating and the thing switched off. Ah, I thought. There is the safety mechanism. Unfortunately after letting the thing cool down for half an hour it wouldn’t turn on again.. When pushing the nice red button on top I heard no click like I should and so I opened it up.

I screwed the part back on and the button clicked and functioned again. And that’s the entire safety mechanism. Well, it works I guess. But of course it also means I have to take better care in managing the time of my sessions and make sure thing doesn’t overheat. Which is fine, but after opening it again to take these pictures I first made a mistake getting the wires back in the right place in the right place so they got stuck between the covers. I noticed that soon enough and corrected it by moving the PCB in the right place. I got a nice shock in the process as I didn’t unplug, doh!

That was last week, and this afternoon when I noticed things weren’t working I first wanted to check the compressor to see if I placed the engine back correctly. I am no expert, but I had the feeling the engine had a harder time getting the air through because of the slowness, maybe because I had somehow twisted the tubes in the compressor.

Anyway, the engine sounds better again like it should but the problem still wasn’t solved. I already occasionally open the airbrush to clean the needle and I clean the nozzle from the outside. I clean the thing with water after every use and every now and then with paint remover. This afternoon I did the same but for the first time I also removed the nozzle. So I now took the entire thing apart and cleaned everything, literately squeaky clean.

And still it didn’t work!

Since I was ready to throw the mixture away now, before I did I threw in another couple of drops of thinner.. and then it finally worked! It was a bit splashy, but after the first few seconds of spraying it was under control.

The compressor was pretty hot by now and I didn’t like the light so that was all today for airbrushing. Anyway, my mixture keeps being too thick and I really have to not be so careful with thinning it.

Having this as a second project is a nice contrast from the FW-190. These two tiny gear bays together took me almost 2 hours! Unfortunately things seem to fit a lot less neatly than the 1/32 stuff I did so far, so I really have to take care with dry fitting. And that in itself is also very difficult, because you sometimes have to keep 5 parts up at the same time!

Groetjes,
Dan