I had heard on the local news that it was going to be a nice day today in Phx AZ. It was a great day with the temps in the high 80s, 88 here today. A good day to paint. I had been waiting for a day like this for weeks and had several projects ready for paint. 3 projects I have wanted painted for years. One is a boxed in 1980 MPC Fundimensions Hemi Cuda street machine, one is a version of the venerable AMT '40 Ford coupe I have had for 20 years and the 3 rd is an old original AMT '25 T with the roof cut off decades ago kitbashed into a street-strip roadster like the ones Tim Boyd built for SA magazine recently.
I had all the parts prepped and cleaned and ready for painting. I got my paints ready and the parts in containers for painting. I was already using my airbrush inside doing buildings and rolling stock for my HO scale diorama, so I was going to use some brand new spray cans outside in a clean wet down place. Things were going fine at both painting places and I was, or I thought I was finally, going to get these old projects painted good enough to assemble. After almost 4 hours of careful painting, in both places, I had just finished the best wet coats I had ever done on these old projects. I was painting some small parts in another box on another table away from the bodies. Perfect day, not a cloud in the sky and not even a breeze that stirred the leaves on the trees.
Every thing was going fine outdoors with the spray painting until I heard my 2 grand kids just out of school coming into the back yard yelling "Grand-Pa we didn't know where you were or what you were doing--What are you doing--can we watch?" And as they ran up to me at the table I was painting on I realized our 2 dogs were running through the now open gate heading right for us. They ran up and started sniffing every thing and wagging their tails and just being dogs. I said to the kids-- please get the dogs out of this yard and put them back in the front yard. They said --"Why grand pa they aren't doing anything".
I slowly got the dogs and the kids to follow me out of the gate and into the front yard. I asked the kids to play with the dog and keep them in the front yard because grand-pa was painting things in the back yard and didn't want the dogs around. They said _- "Why grand pa?-- " the dogs don't play in the paint", and I said I was painting small things and the dog hair got all over the stuff. They said they wanted to see. I took them back without the dogs and showed them the now dog hair covered models and they said --"sorry grand pa".
So all 3 of these old already painted and sunk into the purple pond 3 or 4 times in the last 15 years were once again going back into the pond. And I had the best wet coats I have ever had on any model let alone these 3. I have had nothing but trouble painting these and other projects for years. I don't know how to prevent these sort of unexpected problems that seem to happen to me every time I try to paint shinny paint on models anywhere. Of course the HO stuff came out perfect because they didn't need to be shinny, just painted.
I will soak the models and clean them once again and try once again to paint them. It will be in the 80s for a while here. Later I read the grand kids a bed time story and sat down and had a bowl of home made chilli with crackers and felt blessed to have the kids and the great family I have. After all it is just a hobby. But I swear someday I will get a nice shiny paint job on something.
Take care and love your families and have fun building models. Some day you will see a post here from me saying "I did it-- I painted a great shiny paint job with no dog or cat hair, no little finger prints or smeared peanut butter and jelly, and no dust. Just don't hold your breath. Patrick M
Source: http://cs.scaleautomag.com/SCACS/forums/thread/946796.aspx
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