A friend (Richard) were discussing painting whitemetal safety valve covers with ‘brass’ paint. I had idly mentioned to Richard to polish the metallic paint after it dries with either a cotton bud or kitchen paper. It was during this discussion that it occured to me to use a buffing wheel in a mini drill instead.

I dug out a whitemetal safety valve casting from my H2/J79 kit and after buffing up the casting I brush painted some Vallejo Old Gold onto it. and then when dried overnight buffed it with the mini drill. Getting decent photos of it proved quite a pain but I got something.

Then it occured to me to to add a coat of Johnsons Klear

I still wasn’t too happy with the result but at this point I thought that it was down to the finish of the casting so instead of using a buffing wheel I used a wire cup brush in the mini drill. At the same time I thought it prudent to also polish up a brass casting so I could have a proper comparison the casting in question is a Gladiator example as I had bought a number of them from David to replace the whitemetal casting in a number of ex NER loco kits.

It was at this point that I realised that my Old Gold was not the right colour but I was part way through the next experiment so I ran with it.

My third example is another whitemetal casting this one from my J71 kit and the sequence was was polish the casting with a wire brush then spray rather than brush more Old Gold but this time let down for spraying with Johnsons Klear.

Here are the three together. The polished and sprayed example is by far the best in terms of finish but the colour is wrong when in direct comparison to the actual brass.

I consulted my good lady as to what I might need to add to the old gold to make it more like the brass example and she suggests white or silver to make it paler. I don’t have anymore safety valve castings to hand so I was going to use a dome instead but in the interests of keeping them all similar I elected to stripp the paint off the first expample so that I could polish the casting with the wire brush before trying again with a lighter hopefully more brassey colour. TBC

As an aside I thought perhaps I could cut out the stripping stage by attacking the painted casting with my wire brush in the mini drill. I was really surprised that it didn’t budge it. Despite giving it a good going over all it did was further polish the surface so those who doubt the toughness of modern acrylics take note. Now the casting is soaking in some clean spirit to soften the paint before i have another go.