Saturday 13 August 2011

The dreaded [War]-Jack Frost strikes again.

When the pictures of my new Space Marine Dreadnought were being taken, the model had not been varnished yet, due to a period of wet weather in up here in normally sunny Scotland (yeah, I know!). Finally I looked out of the window one breakfast time last week and saw it was dry and sunny. Excellent! So I rushed out to give the piece and quick coat.

The dreaded frost

Unfortunately, it would appear that it was still to damp or cold or at least clammy, as the dreaded varnish frosting hit my smooth clean paint-job. Now I've experienced this before on my Warmachine Slayer last year, so I was disappointed but not panicked by the prospect of trying to get it back to some sort of fit condition.
After a coat of gloss Varnish

So first job - hit the effected areas with some gloss varnish. This is what I did last time, and it fixed most the problems. This time - not so good. It has improved some areas, but not all. The effect is more visible, ironically, because of my simple faster paintjob, as the imperfections show up on the simple flat surface more. On the areas with more variation (such as the scroll on the left leg) the effect has decreased enough for me to leave it. I will however try a "Plan B" for the front surface, as it is most evident there and if the need comes to repaint it's just a coat of blue!

Post nail polish remover
Plan B is nail polish remover on a cotton bud. As you can see it seems to have taken most the varnish off and some of the paint. This is why I have shyed away from applying it to a more detailed area. It's still a little rough though, so some light sanding will be needed.

Repainted
I did a small amount of light sanding (with some wet & dry paper) but the finish was still a bit rough. I stopped there anyway and re-applied the blue paint. Not as good as the original silky smooth finish, but alot better than I started out with, and should be fine on the table.

4 comments:

  1. Bad luck. What varnish do you use? Its got me worried because i've just started to base and matt varnish mine and i've not done it before.

    Any hints or tips?

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  2. Brutal. Most frosting has to do with humidity from what I've read, but maybe it's even worth picking up some brush on varnish?

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  3. The varnish was the GW silk one (can't remember what silly name they give it) I'm a bit more careful/paranoid about when I varnish now. I do have vallejo matt and gloss varnishes to brush on, but a nice even spray is just nice.

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  4. OOOH...bad one...great paint job and then that happens :-/
    I tried varnish once...luckily on one small fig but it didn´t end up matt as the label said it would so I binned the idea.
    Cheers
    paul

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