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Comments
Alan
Later, Dave S. Tucson, AZ
The hinges on the bigger doors are also leftover from the rigging shed. I added .020 brass rod to simulate the hinge pin.
Base color was primer gray with a nice green on top. Peeled some paint then washed with gray and brown washes and streaked a little. Placed some powders at the bottoms of the cargo doors since dirt would probably accumulate there. Also installed the star NBW. They will be mostly hidden, but I will know they are there.
Kevin, I say give it a try but practice first. I built several test walls to practice getting it on thin enough to get small cracks. I'm mostly satisfied with the finish I got but some of the test walls looked better. Doing a 6 square inch test is a lot different from doing 4 walls as Joel rightly pointed out. I got many areas of uneven coverage in the paint which leads to bigger/out of scale cracks.
A bit of follow up on your advice to Kevin (kebmo).
Based upon your experiments and experience what would you estimate might be the best dilution ratio (distilled water to media) to achieve more even cracking like the results you show in the photos above. I really like the results you achieved on your walls. Those results may be a good starting point for more or less dilution for the effect we might want to achieve.
In order to chip the DecoArt Media from the pre weathered wood did you find that the paint came off easily, about as expected? Or, that the media came off far to easily and was hard to keep on the wall where you wanted the paint to remain cracked?
Once you had the wall or individual board the way you liked did you use anything to stabilize the final look?
Thanks, Dave S. Tucson, AZ
It also appears to me that you used a distinctly different method for achieving the weathered look you desired on the green board with the star bolt. Did you use a more traditional method for that weathering? A very nice contrast in color and weathering to be sure.
As always, thanks for sharing and helping me learn some new techniques to improve my modeling.
Later, Dave S. Tucson, AZ
Dave, I used the product full strength. I found that thinning it with water turned it into a wash that did not crack, and mixing it with paint made it not want to come off the wall. I will work it 2-3 times to get it on evenly then leave it alone to dry. So...I use a wide, flat and somewhat stiff brush to apply the paint. While wet, run the brush up and down the boards a couple of times to even/thin out the application. For my tests, the walls were pre-built. For this build, I did the boards then assembled the walls. I used the standard chalk/alcohol method to pre-color my boards.
Let this completely dry. To remove flakes, my tool of choice is a single edge razor. I didn't like the look that wire brushes gave the effect. Scraping it along the board removes loose/large flakes. The corner of the razor can be used to pick out very small sections. You can remove 100% of the paint with this technique so don't worry about getting it on places you don't want like the sides of the boards. It will take some of the wall color with it.
I chose to use the enamal wash afterwards for a couple of reasons. The paint needs to be toned down since it is such a bright white. Water or alcohol based washes will disolve unsealed paint and soften the edges of the flakes. This is not good since I went with this effect to have the hard edges on the flakes.
The green board has a peeling effect on it. This was the runner-up method for the walls. I plan on incorporating this effect on a larger scale later in the build. I prepared the boards per the instructions. Then brushed on AK Heavy Chipping acrylic. Let this completely dry (overnight is OK). Then brush on base color. Brushing on works fine on boards because of the texture. If I was doing something like a truck, I would want to airbrush it on. But since I don't have an airbrush... Let the base coat dry, then I wet-brushed on a faded version of the base color to give some variation in the color. Let dry (overnight OK again). Score paint with #11, razor, wire brush, whatever. Try not to make big gouges in the paint, just make small nicks. Spray the board with water and let sit for a couple minutes. Pat dry with paper towel. Use scotch tape to lift off flakes of paint. Repeat with tape until happy with results...you can take off all of the paint this way. Alternative method is to use a stiff wet brush to remove the flakes, but my preference was to lift with tape. If you use a brush, it will leave a lot of loose flakes on the board. Spray with water to remove these and it is fine.
Excellent explanations. I appreciate all the time and effort you put into helping me ( all of us on the forum) better understand how you execute a technique to get such really great results.
Now, like the techniques themselves, I need to let them soak in overnight and then begin experimenting and executing them for myself.
Thanks, Later, Dave S. Tucson, AZ
I taped a "wild west office" picture to the back of the addition. I am thinking about putting a light in the addition, so the outline of the pic will be visible through the open window.
The overhang is in a state of limbo. I'm not exactly sure how I want it to look so I will leave it as it is for now. I did want to show just a hint of the wood below the tarpaper so I created some small holes by putting tarpaper on top of dried glue that is on my post-it note palette and sanded the back until the holes popped through.
The pic with the loading doors demonstrates why the view block is important, which is not installed yet.
If I may suggest to soak the 'tar'paper in very diluted white glue until it is saturated and flexible before you place it on the wooden roof. That way it will look more like tarpaper that was burned to the planks, and won't be so stiff like cardboard. Just be careful when you pick it up out of the glue. It will be fragile.
The color on the other hand worked out very well.
However, I'm considering a peeling paint effect on the tower to match the door color of the main building. I am planning on mocking up a slate roof for the tower. If the slate looks good, I'm leaning towards the peeling paint. I feel like if the company put the effort into a slate roof, they would have painted the tower also.
I'll have a week to mull it over as I will be in Ft Worth next week for work.
Both the original weathered wall and peeling green paint walls are done very well. Looks like you will have a very difficult decision to make. When I am personally confronted with a decision like this I generally procrastinate and don't get back to completing the project. Hate to see you stall out in a similar fashion. Go with your instinct and create a narrative that supports your decision. You have a fantastic build going so far where you have inched the modeling bar a bit higher for me based on your decisions to try something new. I appreciate your willingness to take a risk and share the results with us. That's how we all learn and push ahead our skill levels. Look how long it has taken us to bring to model railroading the techniques practiced by other model builders for years already.
Later, Dave S. Tucson, AZ
Here is my mock-up of the tower as is with the green test patch. It makes me lean towards the gray. I wish I knew how to photo shop. Then I could put them side-by-side.
And a big thanks again for Bill's tip on pre-treating metal castings with alcohol. As a reminder, swish your metal castings around in some alcohol, dump the alcohol then add the BlackenIt. The castings get completely blackened quickly. No brushing, etc. Just swirl them around a couple of times and its done. What a time saver.
ed likes yellow.
all kidding aside....
i do like the green in general, but when seeing it juxtaposed with the green freight door it doesn't work for me. it'd be great recipe for a scratch built outbuilding though.
Right now I'm leaning towards leaving the siding as-is and planning on using this technique on another structure as suggested by Kevin and Ken. Once I mock up a slate roof I will decide for sure.
Mike, yes the siding would need to be weathered to match the doors on the white structure to look right.
In the mean time, I'm working on the doors/windows for the tower using the same peeling paint technique.
I've also prepped a couple of pieces of PVC pipe to practice a few weathering techniques for the tank. The black pipe is a satin finish black paint. The military modelers say that they get better results when weathering with oils on top of satin, so I will give it a try. The dark gray is a matte primer. There will also be a matte black piece.