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Mick Wilkinson, and a question about painting

Tony Williams

Well-Known Member
Not about scale models as such, but I hope this is an appropriate forum to ask about painting replica cartridges made from solid aluminium alloy.

As some of you may know, I have quite a lot of such replicas of cartridges which are more or less unobtainable (in the photo below, eight of the eleven grenade rounds are replicas). All of these were made for me by Mick Wilkinson, a fellow collector and ECRA member who many of you will know.

Very sadly Mick suffered a major stroke a few weeks ago. He has survived it and is able to speak again, and the medics appear to be very cautiously optimistic about the future, but he has a long period of uncertainty ahead, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed for him.

At the time, Mick was part-way through making another batch of replicas for me. I now have some which need painting, so I'm going to try to tackle these myself (although I have zero experience of this). A few have grey primer on them, others are just bare aluminium. I'd be grateful for any advice about the kind of primer and paint I'll need (the three key colours being brass, copper and matt black), where I might buy them from (I'll only need small quantities), anything else I might need to do the job, and any tips on painting technique.

Thanks for any help.

grenade.jpg
 
Sorry to hear about Mick hope he makes a full recovery wish him and his family all my best wishes.

Tony if you are painting bare aluminium you are better using etching primer to bit into the alloy, you can get rattle cans on ebay best is probably acrylic paint
 
hi tony,i have been doing the same as you and making replicas from solid aluminium.I start with CNC turned rounds,projectiles and then I have them anodized to the major color ie black for steel cases,gold for brass cases etc
then I use a small airbrush to paint the colors.i spin the projectile(it has a hole in the base which is required for the anodizing) on a battery drill with my left hand and rest my right hand on the vice while painting.i paint the copper drive band and then the required colors
this takes quite abit of practice but results are good
you must use etch primer for aluminium
 

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Very sorry to hear about Mick, I regard him as a good friend and he always made me welcome when I went to visit him and his family, I wish them all a brighter future
Mick
 
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