This is a slightly different Workbench post for me. We have had some very nice weather this Spring, low humidity and warm days. I do have a paint booth, but I prefer to paint outdoors. During the Summer months the humidity in New Jersey can keep me from painting.

This is my simple set up. An old Kitchen cart, my compressor, a tub that holds supplies before painting, an upside down old cookie sheet and a plastic lazy-susan. I use the cookie-sheet when I’ve used some spray on strippers for models. So now it’s just a part of the set-up.

I wheel this out of the garage and set up along side the house. I had used this set-up in the back of the house before but the side gets sunlight longer. I can paint longer into the day.

I start with the model inverted and paint all the surfaces visible for this angle. You can see this covered hopper car sitting on a 5×7 film box. The film box allows me to move the model from the painting area without any trouble. The model is then set out on the back porch to bake a little in the sun.

After about a half hour of baking in the sun, I add a pair of “shop trucks” (in this case partially built Intermountain trucks without wheelsets) and invert the model on the top side of the box.

Once the visible surfaces of the top of the model are painted, I again move the model onto the back porch to bake in the sun. After another hour of baking, they were dry to the touch. They still had some fumes, so I let them set out there until the porch was in shadows.

Below were some of the cars from earlier in the day. I needed to break up all the red being applied with a couple of gray cars. Next up some black cars.