Well it’s one of those Fridays. A quick bit of modelling before heading out of the corral, what could possibly go wrong? Well, the above basically, that’s what could go wrong, and has.

Having completed the painting and decal application for the four Parkside hoppers, this morning was to be a quick brush application of a matt varnish to seal the decals. Best laid plans and all that.

Like myself, I’m guessing a few of you will have paint that has erm… matured. So today started with digging out a tin of Humbrol enamel matt varnish.

Enamel, because I’m going to lay various weathering effects in different media over the top. All good so far.

Well the Humbrol enamel had separated with the Matt pigment elements forming that gel type consistency. So a good stir to break it up, followed by a blast of heat from a hairdryer gave me my initial starting point. I still wasn’t happy with it and used a paint shaker/vibrator to finally get the consistency needed.

That was then applied by brush, but the number decals were clearly affected by it, with the edges breaking away, see above…

I realised that brush application wasn’t going to work this time, so with time cracking on I dug out some Tamiya acrylic matt varnish which again seemed a bit gooey. Except I didn’t. I had picked up Tamiya Flat base, (didn’t read the label obvs, I’m male), and in my rush thought I’ll thin it significantly with water. This means I can put it on as a wash. Well that was just fine until it started to dry, and then the pennies started to drop.

This, this is not looking good I think, it should be paler but not like smeared chalk. It starts to dry clear of course, but as it dries further the white opaqueness comes through, which is what’s occurring in front of me. This paint must have gone off really badly I think picking the jar up to look at it. And then the punchline, it’s not matt varnish, it’s literally all about the base!

The first thing I did was to get back onto the worked areas with plain water, which has reduced the effect quite dramatically, but still far from ideal.

So this is where we are now, two wagons were treated before it all went south, so I’ve been really lucky in not getting caught out doing all of them. Next step I’ll run some darker panel washes into the right angle joints and we should be back on track.

The late Roy Jackson often mentioned he thought the mark of a modeller was how and if, they recovered from making a cock up of something. Well Captain Cock Up certainly visited me today and hopefully he’s now left the building.

Note to self; Today’s lesson, read what it says on the tin.