Wednesday 23 September 2020

ACW Confederate Army update: Humbrol Acrylic Varnish Stage

And finally it was time to be varnish them "in the sun" (or rather while there was sun) and the ACW Confederates were crowded in "spray painting formation" in appropriate easy to spray lines - or so I thought (see below, the ACW Confederate Army, the thing a I discovered and something my Physics teacher never told me was that the force exhorted from the Humbrol Acrylic Matt Varnish spray can, was so mighty it blew some of the figures all away across the table (light plastic on card, say no more)! - Goodbye Bedford Forrest, nice knowing ya! They were safely recovered from the weed patch, but it was a much different experience than spaying 25/28mm fixed to coins - "catch the pigeon" fashion):   

Once the strafing run was complete I stood back to admire my handiwork (see below, that is a 'goodly' bit of painting [by my standards] done over the summer in the "lock-down holidays" - my fingers were firmly crossed hoping that nothing was going to go amiss with the "varnish drying" stage): 


The inspection revealed a good matte coverage over most of the figures. The (Vallejo) paints were nicely dulled down (so that the Vallejo matched the Tamiya finish nicely) but there were one or two horses and one artillery piece that had been affected by the dreaded "white varnish seal" of painting doom. On the horses I used some suitable coloured Vallejo ink to soak in and on the artillery piece I simply repainted the affected wheel and cannon. Methinks I will have to check out the Army Painter (or even Games Workshop) alternative as it may be a better product.

2 comments:

ian drury said...

If you have that varnish problem again, just re-varnish when it's less humid. I got this tip from one of the Madaxeman's podcasts and it worked on my 15mm Crusaders.

Geordie an Exiled FoG said...

Ah, the "black magic" that is varnishing - some days it works others not
Thanks for the tip Ian and hats off to the "Madaxeman"