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Painting Horses Part 2 |
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As a brush will be used by most readers to apply the paint or clear coats, the quality of the brush will have a bearing on the finished job. Cheap brushes from your local $2 plus shop or market will usually shed the hair but this can be minimized. Stand the brush, bristles up and gently part the hair to expose the middle, which is void of hair. Pour a small amount of glue in there and leave to harden. Long hairs will give a better finish. The bristles on most modern brushes are synthetic and are smooth, not like the old real hair ones. Real hair has hundreds of small barbs that stop the paint sliding off when you lift it out of the can. The bows used with string instruments are horsetail hair, and it is the barbs that catch the string and make it vibrate to give you the sound. Stallion hair tends to give a louder sound than mares tail, as urine makes the barbs blunt. You can work that one out yourself! In cold weather, paint tends to be thicker, so to make it flow better, stand the can or your spray gun pot in hot water. This will heat the paint and thin it. With air compressors being so cheap these days, around $100, spray painting is a viable option. Not only does it give a better finish but it also uses less material. Blowing off the sanded surface will reveal many flaws that were filled with sanding dust, so you can fill them prior to staining or undercoating. A small cat food tin of stain will coat an average sized horse and light areas can be ‘shaded’ darker. Like most tools, practice makes perfect, they say! The higher the air pressure at the gun, the more overspray and with some materials the extra air will chill or dry the paint surface too quickly and leave a powdery surface. This also applies to material that has been thinned too much. Too low a pressure with give an ‘orange peel’ effect, as will too thick a paint. A small gun that uses less volume of air, is easier to handle, even though you may have to refill the cup a couple of times. Bleeder and pressure bowl guns are always low-pressure type, often with the air ‘bleeding’ out of the air cap. These are not suitable for lacquer or fast dry finishes. The most used type gun is a ‘suction feed’ with a 2-stage trigger. The first stage allows only air and the 2nd stage opens the adjustable ‘fluid needle’ for the paint to exit. The air rushing past the ‘fluid nozzle’ sucks the paint out of the bowl and the air carries it to the work. This type of gun will handle almost any material. It is getting the combination of air pressure with the correct thickness (viscosity) of paint that determines how good a finish you get. Some of the smaller models are ‘gravity feed’ with the paint bowl above the body of the gun. You need to be careful with this type if you are spraying downwards, as the paint can leak out of the hole in the bowl cover and drip on your job! Some better gravity feed models have a swivel bowl to overcome this. These are good for dappling, which is usually done with a low air pressure (20psi = 137kpa) that gives a soft effect to the edges. Irrespective of whether you use a brush or spray, I have found the best way to support the horse is on 2 sawhorses. Stand the horse on its legs to get the correct spacing and then turn it up side down with the arch of the neck on one trestle and the rear legs on the other. This allows access between the legs, the belly and under the chin areas. It is now an easy matter to turn the horse back to complete the painting. If you wish to move the horse to another area, insert a piece of large dowel into the tail hole as a handle and with your other fingers in its mouth, lift it off the sawhorses. Most old horses were a shade of grey with a touch of blue added; as this is a neutral colour, which would not clash with, what tack was on the horse or its background. I have had customers who wanted a Pink horse for the nursery but after being advised that the colour will remain that way for about 40 years and the nursery will have been repainted several times, they go with traditional colour schemes. The average Australian moves house approximately 4 times in their lifetime and colour fashions also change. Palamino horses seem to look more artificial than any other colour and Black ones show every blemish and all the dust. Painted ‘Chestnut’ horses can be ‘over dappled’ with a darker shade of Brown and White socks added to give it a lift! There has been a trend towards stained and varnished models lately, as there is a ‘warmth’ about seeing the natural grains and figuring of most timbers. The workmanship has to be of a higher standard than a painted model, as all the joints can be seen. Most fillers tend to show and draw attention to the area so a darker stain can be used to disguise the area. Satin clears give a softer look, as they do not reflect the light as much. |
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