Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Inertia is not on my side. Or, how to delay learning a new skill for a very long time.

It's amazing how long it can take to start something new.  Take for instance airbrushing.  Being shown how easy it is to spray track at the Nordel model railroad club in Hockessin, DE, I decided to finally build a booth to be able to put my Aztek to use.  I combined what I liked from the information offered by various people in the Model Railroad Hobbyist (mrhmag.com) forums and built a fair-sized booth. 

That was a year ago.  With my shelf layout's benchwork completed and a desire to paint my Central Valley tie strips prior to gluing them down, I needed to get my equipment set up and start learning to airbrush.  All that was holding me back now was fear of the unknown.  So this past weekend I positioned the booth in my basement storage room next to the window, hooked up some dryer exhaust tubing out the window, and plugged my compressor in.

And there it's sat for the last 3 days.  Not for lack of time for me to get out the Aztek and start practicing on some cardboard, but mostly due to that inertia that keeps me from trying something new until I'm 100% sure I've got all the angles covered.  I feel like I need to now do a bunch of research on airbrush techniques, and how to clean the tool properly, and which air pressures and paint-to-thinner ratios to use, etc.  You get the picture.  Manufacturing myself a to-do list to keep from starting.

Well, my plan is to just get some paint, a piece of scrap cardboard, and some Windex as thinner/cleaner, and start messing about with it on Friday, as one son has baseball games the next two nights.  Because after this airbrushing hurdle, there's several other things waiting to be tackled, including handlaying track and turnouts.  Time to get going on this layout-building thing!


  1. Robin,
    Remember that the real world is also never perfect and that there is a prototype for everything! Get painting!

  2. It took me until late Sunday night but my tie strips did get a rather uneven coat of grey paint. Next step: try either Lance Mindheim's wash technique with some burnt umber oils over the grey, or Pelle Soeberg's wash of Vallejo colors. The work of both artists is amazing, and I find myself sometimes getting supplies to do both methods (scenery, track, etc) just because I can't decide to follow the one or the other's examples.