Hi Guys, I need some suggestions or 'know-how' about removing the etched steel grills from a set of undecorated Oriental Brass E8'S I just got before I paint them. Thanks very much, Phil
I would suggest that you might be better off doing an extremely fastidious job of masking the grilles off if you plan on using the same style of grille on the finished locomotives. If the grilles are soldered onto the bodies, they are not coming off without a thorough job of wicking the solder away from the joints - a nasty job even for modelers who are handy with soldering irons.
I was just looking at pictures of Oriental E units at Mark Peterson's website. The E8 he has pictured has the Farr vertical grilles. There are no obvious attachment points detectable from the picture. If there is no practical way of removing the grilles, you might have to mask only the portions of the grille over the open areas and then remove the paint from the grille portions that cover the body panels. Good luck.
At the risk of stating the obvious, if you decide to de-solder the grills, be sure to soak off the laquer first (MEK or similar). MH
