Biting half the bullet

After putting it off as long as I can, I’ve at last got to the hard bit of repainting  our second Buckby can.  The original looked like this

but the paint didn’t take to well to the weather and big flakes of paint eventually came off, the same as the smaller can did earlier. I repainted the smaller can in 2014

and it’s kind of OK if you don’t look too closely. 

The second can has been stripped back to the galvanising, had three coats of etching primer (nasty stuff that I sprayed on whilst holding my breath), a couple of undercoats and three top coats in four colours, and I can’t think of any way now to delay the inevitable painting of the roses.  Of course I had forgotten how to do it, so it was back to the practice board for quite a few hours, experimenting with different techniques and designs. 

This time I’m going to try to do them a little differently and probably less strictly traditionally in form.  You’ll have to wait to see, ‘cos this (below) is as far as I’ve got today using the traditional background prep (the easy bit).

And of course it’s only for the first two bunches of roses.  This can is going to have more than the other one I did, and I’m still thinking of having a go at a castle somewhere on it.  The next few brush strokes are going to be terrifying, but .  .  .

.  .  .no more terrifying than next Saturday morning when we have been invited to join the Indigo Dreamers on their trip down the Thames estuary and into the Medway.  That’s virtually going to sea. Wind, tide, waves, big ships, – scary stuff in a little narrowboat. The Thames Estuary there is five miles wide! We’re more used to a width of thirty feet. Stay tuned for reports on that one.