Varnished At Last

It’s been a long time coming, but finally the haunted house has been varnished. Last weekend, after blowing up the mower, I decided that Sunday would be dedicated to the models, weather permitting. 

Fortunately the weather was, quite breezy but warm, so with the shade up I finally got the mother of all varnish jobs finished. After a few hours with the tin of varnish and the brush the haunted house is now all but complete. 

The only thing left is to reattach the stone ‘support’ pillar which keeps coming off. I also got four of the larger ghost town models that had been recently painted up varnished as well in the mammoth session. 

The painting of these had not gone as well as I would have liked. The Wilko paint I had been using for ‘Burnt Umber’ has been changed since I originally discovered it. 

Although the tube are much larger, so more paint yay! this new version of Burnt Umber has come out more redder than before and I was forced to add a lot of additional black and white into the mix to tone it back to the darker wood effect I had previously taken to.

With Hobbycraft having had a special offer running this month on their acrylic paints I have taken the opportunity to pick up a selection of black, grey, white, umbers and others from their range and will be trying those out soon. 

Meanwhile, whilst the mower was blowing up, I’ve also suffered a hard drive failure, some data was recoverable from backups but other data wasn’t. Hence the blog silence for a bit. I have however made good progress on the tapestry and will be posting some new photos soon. 

(Oh and I not mention the boiler... They say things come in threes so I hope that’s me off the hook for several years now please!!!)

Varnish and doors.

The latest ghost town buildings have now been varnished, using the large tin of mat varnish I invested in last year. All these need now are the doors to be complete.

 

Inside the model I’ve stuck some foam board strips and squares of card; this will make the slot to slip different doors into place. Some of the doors may be cross swappable, some maybe not – but I’ve ensured that at least each doorway gets one door by numbering them, and making one to fit each.

These now need a quick paint job to bring them in line with the rest of the models.

Mass Varnishing

At least it was a dry day, we even had a few minutes of sunshine; enough to fool me into going inside putting on sun block. The second I did this, the sun became shy again and hide behind clouds for the rest of the day. But I did manage to get the ghost town buildings varnished, so these are now complete. 

Last year when I thought I would finish these I decided to try out using a large tin of DIY varnish rather than the very expensive for what you get size model varnish. Let’s face it these are all wood buildings anyway so it is not as if I am using it on delicate figures.

So last year I bought this can of RONSEAL Quick Drying Varnish Matt Clear for interior doors and furniture. 

This was the tin after two models.

It says dry to the touch in 20 minutes, actually outside today it was quicker than that, but to the touch is not quite the same as holding it in your hand, if you’re holding it the pressure is different and you still risk getting slightly tacky and sticky. 

I tested it out first one a small area then tried one side of a building.

This also came with the added bonus of 33% extra free, so more models in the future then.

I applied it with a brush; it was clear but if you were too quick you risked getting foamy bubbles a bit like sea foam, especially around the fiddly bits like windows and beams. 

There was also a small amount of colour lifted off the models and mixed in with the varnish, although it was not enough to spoil the effect I had intended for these models.

Remember this was not designed for this work really. 

However if you gave it a few seconds then manipulated it with a dryer brush you could clean it up and get a reasonable finish. Just don’t go too thick, I did make that mistake in one part and it is a bit patchy. 

However having done the four outstanding models I am pleased that I decided to do this instead of the smaller tins of model varnish.

I have retaken all the ghost town gallery photos in the same style, and set all the models out together in mock up game layout. You can see these on the Gallery (Ghost Town) page.