Question for you finishing experts.

Aug 28, 2007 2 Replies

Just got a Walthers S.P. C-30-1 wood caboose and plan to re-letter it for the Sud Pacifico De Mexico, S.P.'s Mexican road that used a bunch of cast-off and/or borrowed S.P. and T.&N.O. equipment. Problem is that it comes pre-finished and lettered for the S.P.



Anyone out there got a sure-fire way to get the factory lettering off the sides without wrecking the finish beneath it as well? Or, alternatively, would it be easier to just strip the sucker and start out from the ground up? (You'd think that after fifty-odd years in the hobby I'd have learned all of the tricks, but I've never done anything that requires removing factory lettering from a plastic car without ruining the finish at the same time.)



Thanx,



Pete


Best luck I've had was with an electric eraser, the kind that draftsmen used back before Autocad. It had a choice of eraser rubber, from soft and pink up thru harder and gritty. A drop of Solvaset, let it soften the marking, followed by some careful erasing with the gritty rubber. Even so, the method wasn't foolproof, a couple of times I erased too far, going thru the paint down to raw plastic. However some touchup paint followed by decals came out alright. The real problem is the factory letting is usually paint, stamped or silkscreened onto, the base paint coat. If there is some magic chemical that softens the lettering paint without also attacking the finish paint, I am unaware of it. Nor do I expect such a thing to be invented anytime soon.

David Starr

"David Starr" wrote

I used an old-fashioned manual eraser, but it worked just fine in combination with the Solvaset: problem solved!

Thanks for the solution! (Pun intended.)

Pete

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