Primed and painted

This morning, I did some more airbrush testing.

Yesterday’s main lessons were simple: wear gloves, stop improvising the cleanup process, and treat the paint workflow with more discipline.

I wore gloves from the start and had the cleaning flow anticipated and laid out before I began. That alone made the whole session feel less chaotic. Instead of stopping halfway through to figure out what needed to be cleaned, rinsed, wiped, or flushed, the airbrush workflow had more of a rhythm to it.

I also made a simple wooden friction mandrel so I could paint the dials vertically. With the dial upright, the gravity-fed airbrush behaved more consistently, and the whole process felt easier to control.

I painted the two primed dials from yesterday, then intentionally painted four additional dials that were not cleaned, not degreased, and not primed. The point was not to make those dials good. It was to create a useful comparison. I want to see, after curing, how much the preparation actually changes adhesion, surface quality, coverage, and final appearance. First impressions are that the primer creates a much more textured finish. If paint on brass adheres well, it has a more clean, semi-gloss look. I suspect the raw brass would have to be perfect for this to work as all the dents and dings of these early prototype dials are very visible. Both could have their place… let’s see once they are cured.

One of the unprepared dials was an early Rittenhouse prototype. I wanted a first baseline for how much of the engraved detail, relief, and texture would remain visible once paint was applied. That question matters a lot for where the Rittenhouse dial is going. The whole design depends on depth and texture surviving the finishing process without becoming too loud or disappearing completely.

At the end, I dropped a few very rough brass indices onto the dial just to start seeing the idea in physical space. They were not finished parts, but even rough pieces can be useful.

I’ll come back to these after 24 hours and compare notes.

For now, the lesson is that the process is already improving. Gloves helped. Preparation helped. The cleaning routine helped. The friction mandrel helped.