2" Burrell Build

Good Morning All,

Following my first post last week in a regards to some help and advice I thought I'd start a new thread to cover the build of a recently purchased 2" Burrell, somewhere I can document the build in one place and seek advice/comments from others.

I've been contemplating making the investment for some time now. I ideally wanted a 4" Scale engine but given my current time and space constraints, when a complete set of part built kits for a 2" kit came available last month I couldn't help myself....!

Anyway, hopefully I can cut my teeth on the 2" Kit and get more involved with others, which hopefully will give me a clear indication to what would be the most suitable long term engine to purchase.

So on to the build so far. As I said previously, unfortunately some of the components/kits have been started but hopefully over the series of this thread I can document what I've done/un done to put them right.

Best Regards
Josh

So onto the first kit.

The front wheels looked to already be 90% complete. The obvious omissions being the tyres and painting.

I unfortunately didn't take any before and after photos, but I started out my grit blasting one of my wheels as it had a messy/thick coat of primer which thankfully came up really well. The other wheel had just had a light coat of primer so I didn't touch this.

I then took to cleaning the outer rim as these has unfortunately grown a layer of surface rust, but have luckily came up really well.

1st Front Wheel - Outside View



1st Front Wheel - Inside View



2nd Front Wheel - Outside View



2nd Front Wheel - Inside View



The next step for these is to now fit the Rubber Tyres, I've however sent a query off to the team at STW as I'm unsure if the previous owners have cut down the Vulcanised Tyres of if they really should have that much stretch - See below image, showing approx a 60mm short fall when offered up around the rim for an initial fitting feel.



Short of that, I've just taken delivery of a tin of Isoflex "Special Primer" & "High Performance Liquid Rubber" as per STW Instructions, so once I've bottomed this out I'll be ready to go.

Regards
Josh

Now for a few quieres/what did you do with your Burrell.

Once I've finished the front wheels at some point I'll need to get cracking with the paint. From what I've read Craftmaster Paints seem to be the way so I'll be putting an order in shortly and I think I'll also look to hand paint the wheels and again from what Ive ready the Purdy Brush Range seem to be the best for this. What I'd like to know from others is what quantities of paint you've used.

To put that into perspective, I'm planning on going for Burrel Chocolate Wheels so I'll also need to get some Dark Red High Build Undercoat, I assume a couple of coats of an Etch or Halfords Primer would suffice or do I really need to coat them with Enamel Primer? I assume for a 2" Build 500ml of each will be more than adequate for the wheels?

In regards to further progress later on down the line, the rest of the engine I'm planning on doing in Burrell Green with the Dark Green High Build Undercoat again - From previous experience/builds would 500ml be enough or am I more likely to need 1 Litre for the main components?

Finally, in regards to the wheel nut rivets and nuts - By the time I've applied several coats of Undercoat and Top Coat to the nuts do you think the below hexagonal finish will be covered up by this or will they need some more attention/dressing prior to paint? I know they will be on the inside anyway, I'd just like to achieve the best possible finish where I can - Picture below for thoughts.



I'll leave the progress with Kits 2, 3, 4 & 5 and give you a chance to catch up!

Regards
Josh

Hi Josh,

I cannot comment specifically for the Burrell (I am building a 6" Foden) but I can give some thoughts a little bit on the paint front as I painted my Ferguson tractor out in Craftmaster paints.

Craftmaster anti-corrosive grey primer is good but it is designed for Ferrous metals properly. On the tractor I settled on a spray etch primer (non-craftmaster) for anything which required it after having awful experiences with another company's brush etch primer. I used Craftmaster's brush anti-corrosive primer on ferrous metals and found it to be a good primer. When I moved onto Undercoat I had no problems with the Craftmaster paint sticking to the etch primer. If I were making a 2" engine I'd probably go for a spray primer for ease but on a larger project I find that brush paint is more economical so I've stuck with that on my Foden build.

In terms of quantities, you'll first need to think of what paint build you are going to do. Craftmaster recommend on their painting that you do a build up of 7-8 coats as a "standard" build: 1 or 2 Primer, 2 undercoat, 2 gloss, 2 varnish. For the tractor I decided not to go with Varnish in the end due to the maintenance requirements but I will for the bodywork on the Foden, so instead I bumped my paint build up to 3 undercoat and 3 gloss to get a sufficient build/protection. I can attest that the finish has excellent depth and shine at that build but 8 coats of paint might be excessive on a 2" engine. Hopefully someone more experienced with a 2" engine build can comment on that.

The tractor used circa 3-4l of gloss paint overall, more like 3l of Undercoat, and about 2l of primer but is obviously a far bigger project!

Bearing that in mind, I would personally plump for 1L of your main colour - that should be enough to make sure you have a good paint build, no risk of running short and would leave matching paint to touch up if you have any accidents. It's worth mentioning though that I've never had a problem with Craftmaster paints matching - the tractor I ended up buying multiple tins over time and all matched fine. For your wheel colour I would imagine 500ml would be more than ample.

One final thought - it might also be worth considering though if you are planning on having a matching riding truck or similar - having sufficient paint left over to do this would prevent paying for postage again.

I hope some of that helps,

George.