I’m building an ash dumping pit/tower, and the beam frame structure is steel. What color acrylic paint do you all use for the steel, and what colors do you use to weather (paint/chalk). Thanks.
Hal
Generally every railroad will have standards for structures, stations, maintenance equipment, engines, cars, etc. Colors for steel could vary from red oxide, black, silver, gray, yellow, even orange. If you are modeling a specific prototype you will need to follow their standard. If free lancing you can make it whatever you want.
Thanks for replying. Hal
Just wondering, did you mean what (available paint) colors match the (various) shades of unpainted, uncoated (e.g not galvanized, not plated, not coated w/ some sort of plastic sealant, etc.) steel beams - which seem to range from a new light grey to a weathered dark grey to a rusty brown (which in fact may be never used steel, just covered in a thin layer of rust).
Cause that’s actually a good question. (Sheet metal generally seems to be a kind of light grey, which Floquil primer dusted w/ a bit of grey chalk for weathering seems to match well to me at least).
Yep, I was looking for the the available paint color for unpainted, uncoated steel beams (like for metal coal towers or RR structures I think) and then for the weathering. Thanks for your help. I was leaning toward dark gray and then weathering. I assume black was also a good choice. Would they tend to have rust color in weathering as well as the grey chalk?
Hal
Last year I worked for a steel fabricator, and took lots of mental notes about the material. Uncoated steel is a very dark gray, but still with a bit of a metallic glint. Depending on how long it’s been out, it will have spots of rust, ranging from fresh and bright orange to dark oxide red.
I painted the above by shooting it first with gray primer, then alternating mists of flat black, silver aluminum, and oxide red. All from giant spray bombs available at Walmart for under a dollar a piece. Went back with a fine brush to paint the spacers to look like wood dunnage. The strapping/cables are black thread.
Freshly galvanized steel is almost a pure flat silver color. You can simulate it with the silver aluminum paint with a dullcote chaser.
Lee
That seems the standard for replicating clean galvanized steel because it works, albiet most use Testor’s Silver (not Chrome Silver) and then Dull-Cote - for somewhat worn galvanized I then drybrushed a light grey acrylic (one of the Ceramcoat kind) to punch up the flatness of the ‘metal’ and cut down the shine (I only did it on chain so far where it looked good, but will try it on some traffic sign channel posts soon).
I save the dull-coated spray aluminium for…aluminium!
For (some types of) chimneys, vents, downspouts etc, I found Anodized Bronze spray (followed w/ dull-coat of course) looks to be a pretty good match to prototype color (weathered w/ dark grey & dark brown chalks to taste).
Alas, the anodized bronze does not seem to match the color of really weathered steel, which looks like a cross between weathered black (a bit too light), and very dark grey - I seek to paint some track bumpers in that color as the track bumpers around here seem to come in two colors - a bright yellow (even when dirty it’s still quite colorful), and that ‘light’ black color.
Hi!
To summarize the previous posters… “pick a color” and go with it. I prefer shades of grey with a black wash, or a wash of Testors “burnt iron” streaked on it.
The thing is, many times painting something exactly as it appears in the real world just does not look right in the model world. I can’t really explain why, except maybe its the effect of sunlight on objects.
ENJOY,
Mobilman44
Thanks everyone for taking time to reply. You’ve really given me good info.
Hal