repair and repainting a tasset

[snapdragon]

If you have read my post "To Repair or Replace" you will know that a replacement pack had a dodgy tasset.

I decided that rather than go back to CS and scream at them in a very loud military parade level about goods and services act, items being fit for purpose etc I would go down the repairing avenue. It is not too hard to do.

As a hobby I restore WWII tanks so repainting etc is part of what I do and the principals apply here, but on a different scale.

Here is the offending item



You can see that the varnish has flaked, cracked and mostly fallen away and paint has not adhered properly to the metal tasset and it is showing rust.

It is obvious that this piece has not been prepared or painted correctly and the first thing we need to do is to remove the rest of the varnish and paint.

On a Tank it is much easier to do with power tools (after taking samples of the paint for colour matching)

We can do much the same thing with the tasset but on a smaller scale. below are the tools I have used to remove all the paint and rust from the tasset.



What you don't see is the Proxxon rotary tool and flexible shaft. Other than that we have some fine grit wet and dry, chisel shaped blade in a craft knife, grinding bit and brass wire brush.

as the paint was not put on with a primer removal is quite easy and only took about 30 minutes by using the chisel blade to scrape away the paint and the (pink) grinding bit to grind away any reluctlant areas of paint and the rust that was underneath it all. I then went over the surface with the proxxon set to a high speed and the brass wire brush and followed it up with a rub over with the wet and dry paper.

Here is the result that is ready to go into the paint shop for priming.



I will have to contact my paint aerosol supplier and order some hi gloss Jet Black paint. This I can do later in the week, so my next post will show the part being primed and then painted.

I think that this works out cheaper than being on the phone to customer services etc.

Comments welcome

James

[chill]

Well when I found this thread I did think your nephew / a n other relative had got their hands on it ...

But again I think this course of action is far better than screaming at a customer service advisor in a military ( or none military fashion ) is far from the right course of action. In fact it is a fast track to getting no help at all .

[snapdragon]

it was a comment that was meant to have a tongue in cheek approach! I never do that unless it is a last resort, usually my calls to CS result in gales of laughter!

[casper]

I'm sure after a polite phone call to customer services or better still an e-mail with a pick of the part that has a paint defect that they would for sure send out a replacement and then you would have a spare. you never know snaps

[chill]

it was a comment that was meant to have a tongue in cheek approach! I never do that unless it is a last resort, usually my calls to CS result in gales of laughter!

To be honest your post ( despite your clarification that it was meant to be tongue in cheek )can clearly be read otherwise . So maybe the tongue was not planted firmly in cheek as you envisaged .

[snapdragon]

note to self!

Place tongue in cheek, THEN write post and design smiley to show this.

In actual fact, I accidentally broke a part on the faceplate which is crucial to holding the nose in place.......



My resulting call to CS produced the following....

Send the entire pack back to Jarrow, Registered post at my expense. (most of this had been built up by this time and looks really good!) They would, on recipt send out a new pack.

Having spent the best side of 2 weeks putting all this together Understandibly I was reluctant to do this, so instead I bought another pack (£36) which would be added to my bill. Out of all the parts (which are perfect) This tasset was the only one which was dodgy and should not have really passed inspection! Things do slip through the net and so, rather than go through the "Send it back and we will send you a replacement" I am repainting it myself. I thought I would share this with you all as it could be a useful thing to know about.

As I have now replacement parts for the faceplate I can carry on with my build.

James

[baby_astons]

now I do have a technical question:
are the parts actually made of pressed tin plate? if not the rust issue would interest me even more as I don't know any other stuff that would be able of rusting -
before anyone here starts off, I know that the chemical term would really be rusting for silver, alloy copper etc etc as that only means the metal is oxidising -
rust in this question has only been aimed at as the nasty reddish/brown iron oxyde (for the freaks: {x \ Fe^{II}O x y \ Fe^{III}_{\ 2}O_3 x z \ H_2O} )
ever before had a tinplate partworks?! interesting stuff...
as per another question - don't think the chinese packing team would give a d(ime) if a manager from the Uk would give them a call to be more careful when making the parts batches...

[Mark]

So, let me get this straight. You messed up the face mask, and DeAg offered to replace it free of charge if you returned the old parts. Seems generous to me to be honest. They could have said, you messed up, you buy a replacement. Anyway, you purchased a replacement set, understandably not wanting to send back assembled parts. Fair enough.

One of the parts in the replacement pack was faulty. Although you didn't actually need that part, you could have phoned up CS and said it was faulty and they would have probably replaced the pack without any problem. On the odd occasion I've had a faulty part, a simple call to CS has resulted in a replacement being sent without any problem at all. They send out complete packs as its the most time/cost effective way of dealing with replacements.

You have now decided to repair the faulty part (that you don't need !) spending time and money in the process. The resultant repaired piece is almost certainly not going to match the other pieces as you don't have the original paint. With the best will in the world, black paints from differrent makers are going to be a different black (ask BA if you don't believe me). But that doesn't matter as you won't be using this part anyway

Am I missing something ?

[snapdragon]

You're not missing anything, Mark

BA, the parts a metal. What kind of metal I don't know, but it could be pressed steel. Not got a clue

The closest match I can do is RAL 9005 Jet Black. It is a spare part anyway, and if I have to use it for some reason I can place it so it won't be noticed.

[baby_astons]

sorry to be a pain james, black is a p** to paint to match - so the display will need to be with the painted part facing the wall if you don't want to see it...
maybe the messed up part you got was a sent back piece someone else has messed up and they simply recycled it by sending it to you...

[snapdragon]

I know Black is a right B******* to match, but there again isn't any colour.

THe part in itself is a spare part and as I am not intending to use it then it is good practice painting wise. If by perchance I do end up building up the spare set of tassets then I will place this set where it is not going to be noticed.