I had just sprayed on my first coat of varnish on 140 afghan figures carefully placed on top of a cardboard box which was carefully placed on top of a bucket for that rotational spin to get an even coverage, when the set of draws behind me decided to fall on my back pushing me forward and scattering all the figures on to a grubby garage floor. I hunched there with a vital decision before me - do I pick up the figures or do I get the set draws off my back? Of course I picked up the figures first with the set of draws balanced on my back ;D
Anyway, my afghan figures have that extra bit of grubbiness, the varnishing has worked fine over the astonish wash and has a nice matt finish
Bloody Hell :o
Good show for putting the figures first!
400 15 mm celt infantry 16 chariots, a pile of cavalry and civilians all just been based into filler, girlfriend at the time, wondered what the board on top of the wardrobe was and tilted it to find out 400 infantry, 16 chariots, a whole hoard of cavalry and civilians were raining down arounde her ears and onto the floor, with the filler still damp, and unfortunately they went everywhere, needless to say it was my fault >:(
Quote from: Maenoferren on 24 October 2010, 09:10:47 PM
... girlfriend at the time...
That could go into a list of "how to recognize keepers (and otherwise)"
After spending a lot of time painting figures, I usually apply matt varnish spray to give a bit of protection from handling. Once or twice the varnsh has gone grey and opaque at the final stage which has produced a bit of swearing on my part.
I found that it's advisable to have some nail varnish remover handy when spraying to slap onto the figures as quickly as possible if anything goes wrong and get the vanish off before it sets. If you use acrylics, the paint will not be effected so you're figures won't get trashed. My missus has some handy wipes that I "liberate" occasionaly for this purpose. I've also noticed that the varnish is more likely to go off if the weather has been wet so I tend to only spray on dry days.
Never varnish with anything but artist's aerosol fixative.
only spray on dry days
I thought you were in Middlesboro' ;)
I once tried to undercoat an army of 6mm Aztecs (you know, the ones that nobody makes in 10mm). I sprayed 'em with what I thought was sand-covered aerosol. Alas, it was flock! I found myself the proud owner of an army of little Mexican teddy-bears.
Quote from: fred12df on 27 October 2010, 07:06:10 PM
only spray on dry days
I thought you were in Middlesboro' ;)
...not Manchester ;D
Quote from: FierceKitty on 27 October 2010, 04:26:57 PM
Never varnish with anything but artist's aerosol fixative.
Thanks. I'll give that a try
Quote from: FierceKitty on 27 October 2010, 07:25:57 PM
I found myself the proud owner of an army of little Mexican teddy-bears.
=O How much do I want to see pics of them??! 8)
I'm araid a few days of hard work with a toothbrush ended the teddy-bears' picnic.
"whole hoard of cavalry and civilians were raining down arounde her ears and onto the floor"
You could say it was raining "celts & dogs" - ;D
Once after the other half at the time had finished painting some 28mm Modern ish Figures I was givent eh job of varnishing them using miniature paints varnish unfortunately I had just been using the matt one and picked up what I thought was the same pot turned out I had gone and picked up the Gloss Varnish they looked really poor after that luckilly one of the chaps in the club had a can of Testors dull coat which sorted out the problem.
Another memorable one was watching in horrow as my Cat decided to jump over the settee onto the work table, He missed and knocked over around 500 LOTR figures I was reattaching arms and weapons for weeks after that.
Tom H
aka Bilbo
Once had a Siamese and Burmese game interrupted by a Siamese and a Burmese kitty on the table.
My worst disaster: I completed a Necron army for 40K. Somewhere around 75 figures. I spent the previous six months spraying them with Chrome and inking the recesses, and painting guns and other odd bits to mark units. I was very careful about handling them, because the chrome finish would get marred from being handled. I was looking forward to playing with the army!
I spray coated the whole army with Krylon gloss coat. In five minutes I realized that the problem wasn't that the varnish was cloudy, but that the varnish destroyed the chrome surface! ??? :( :o :'( ~X( I was really mad for a week! That was over two years ago. I STILL have not gone back and corrected that mistake. :'(
Since then I found the solution to the problem. Future Floor polish over the chrome. It forms a barrier to the spray on varnish.
BlackEd - i had exactly the same problem with my own Necrons last week using GW Purity Seal. I'll never used Purity Seal again - used twice and failed twice.
Not only did the spray go cloudy but it turned the metallic highlights into flat grey >:( I managed to fix it by appyling humbrol gloss varnish - which completely restored them - i then matted them down with brush on W&N acrylic matt varnish and they look pretty good.
I painted 20 x 28mm ECW for a skirmish game. As they are they were the giant kind of figures, and for a demonstration game, I had put in quite a lot of time in painting all the buttons, frills etc. As I admired the paintwork (they were good) I reached out for a can on varnish, took the top off and sprayed a light coat of varnish on them. Except it wasn't varnish, it was black undercoat. The undercoat and varnish had the same colour tin and top, I just hadn't read the tin before using.
There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Which is why I read the label at least twice before varnishing.
Is twice enough? :-\
Reaching for the black undercoat spray... or even white has happened to me more than a few times. I now read the top several times before actually spraying, and I STILL half expect it to ruin everything - like a bad nightmare.
Probably my worst living memory of painting gone wrong has to be an entire five boxes of plastic space marines, orcs, squats and imperial guard. Now this was many years ago but, after an agonizing amount of time painting them all and looking forward, finally, to being able to field them in a few games, I took them all outside to varnish (I was using artists varnish in a pro modellers spray paint utility gun)... did a fantastic job... freezing cold because it was mid winter; bought the large flat wooden block full of figures back inside to place near the fire in the lounge so everything could dry.....
.... and tripped on the edge of the carpet.
Some pieces flew into the glowing red hot embers in the fire and vanished like Gollum and Frodo`s Ring, others just melted into pools of multi coloured plastic where ever they touched the fire fender or excessively hot tiles in front of the fire-place, the rest tipped onto the carpet like a kamiaze waterfall picking up dust, cat hairs, and all manner of household nuisance, making those newly painted wet varnished miniatures fortunate enough not to lose their existance in the flames, look like fur balls from some macabre episode of Fraggle Rock.
I almost think those that flew into the fire were the fortunate ones.
I think I actually cried in frustration LOL.
Six
:'( :-[ =O