I've done a bad thing 02
Have I gone too far?
A few weeks ago myself, Matt Csenge, and Vinnie Fusca were talking about building Budd cars. flic.kr/p/qx1Znt
Now the bodies of the Budd cars were all finished in stainless steel. It makes for a very eye catching rail car. Something that normal light gray just can't replicate. But there is a LEGO color that comes close, Metalic Silver ( www.bricklink.com/browseList.asp?colorID=67&itemType=P ). Unfortunately the range of metallic silver parts is too limited. And while there have been some of the custom LEGO chromers who have produced parts in this color they are prohibitively expensive. So borrowing an idea from another AFOL the suggestion was brought up to try painting them ourselves. And so this is my first experiment into this dark, forbidden art.
I have done some model building outside of LEGO and am experienced in painting but this is my first time trying to recolor bricks. I used Tamiya acrylic paint and an airbrush.
My real intent here on this first experiment was to see how close I could get the color. the bricks in the middle are official LEGO bricks in metallic silver, Yes they did make 1x8 bricks. The 2x4 brick on the right is finished in Tamiya Flat Aluminum. The 2x4 bricks on the left are finished in Tamiya Chrome Silver. It's hard to tell from the photo but of the two I think the Chrome silver is a pretty close match. Tamiya does have a few other variants of silver that I have not tried but I feel the chrome silver is well within acceptable color tolerance.
While I'm pretty confident about the color I still need to do some testing with how the paint affects clutch, the paint adds thickness to the brick, and paint durability.
The big question though is, Is this a step to far? Is this no longer in the spirit of LEGO?
I've done a bad thing 02
Have I gone too far?
A few weeks ago myself, Matt Csenge, and Vinnie Fusca were talking about building Budd cars. flic.kr/p/qx1Znt
Now the bodies of the Budd cars were all finished in stainless steel. It makes for a very eye catching rail car. Something that normal light gray just can't replicate. But there is a LEGO color that comes close, Metalic Silver ( www.bricklink.com/browseList.asp?colorID=67&itemType=P ). Unfortunately the range of metallic silver parts is too limited. And while there have been some of the custom LEGO chromers who have produced parts in this color they are prohibitively expensive. So borrowing an idea from another AFOL the suggestion was brought up to try painting them ourselves. And so this is my first experiment into this dark, forbidden art.
I have done some model building outside of LEGO and am experienced in painting but this is my first time trying to recolor bricks. I used Tamiya acrylic paint and an airbrush.
My real intent here on this first experiment was to see how close I could get the color. the bricks in the middle are official LEGO bricks in metallic silver, Yes they did make 1x8 bricks. The 2x4 brick on the right is finished in Tamiya Flat Aluminum. The 2x4 bricks on the left are finished in Tamiya Chrome Silver. It's hard to tell from the photo but of the two I think the Chrome silver is a pretty close match. Tamiya does have a few other variants of silver that I have not tried but I feel the chrome silver is well within acceptable color tolerance.
While I'm pretty confident about the color I still need to do some testing with how the paint affects clutch, the paint adds thickness to the brick, and paint durability.
The big question though is, Is this a step to far? Is this no longer in the spirit of LEGO?