The Little World

Do I take an extra day – and undercoat the body parts of the ZIS-5? Or just spray paint straight onto the tan plastic and hope it doesn’t scratch off?

Well, I have decided to be moral, and careful, and cowardly. I have seen too many finishes ruined by me when I try to take short cuts. It is the undercoat.

This kit – like some of the Tamiya ones – is so detailed, and has such a fine surface finish to the parts, that it doesn’t need to be swathed in 500-grit undercoat. Even 1000 is too much. I have opted to spray a light coat of Mr Surfacer 1200.

And this time I have decided to try a new idea. Normally I consign the undercoat to a single-action Procom Boy WA airbrush. It is just an on/off control and you can dust over a big aircraft easily without much manual dexterity. But spraying out of the single action nozzle is rather less discriminating than using a double action with a .3 nozzle.

This time I cut the undercoat with Mr Thinner regular, as it was a little bit warm in the workshop…and I deliberately made it thinner than normal. The effect was to enable me to go in close with a low pressure and wipe a very thin layer of the grey onto the washed plastic. As I had built some of the cargo box and had the interior of the truck cab to do, this meant there was less likelihood of build-up and runs.

I swashed wherever I thought I would be painting later and left it to dry in an increasingly hot workshop. In Western Australia you choose your spray moments judiciously – not when it is wet and cold and not when it is hot and dry. I can see that colour coats for this will need to go on tomorrow very early to avoid dry spraying. Plus I’ll need to cut with levelling thinner.

I wonder if the Ural factory used an undercoat?