Making plastic look like weathered wood

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

I have a “what I did” about making plastic look like weathered wood at:

http://www.pacificcoastairlinerr.com/weathered_plastic/

Click image to enlarge

Thank you if you visit
Harold

2

looks great. thanks. [:D]

3

You do nice work Harold and I appreciate your sharing. I find myself using your stuff a lot lately.

4

Nice work. Thanks for sharing it with the rest of us.

5

Yes, thank you for sharing this process. The results look fantastic!

6

Nice work! I’ve used a similar process except that I start with a light gray primer rather than white. I’ve used various shades of acrylic washes and alcohol/India ink. Weathering allows you to experiment, be creative and get the Forest Gump effect. “You never know what you’re going to get”. Often the effect you end up with is better than the one you had in mind. One of the best pieces of advice I ever read was in an article by Mike Tylick in which he said one of the keys to good scenery is learning to keep the lucky accidents.

7

I have visited your site several times, Harold, and always enjoy the experience. Thanks for helping us to see your ways of doing things. It really helps.

-Crandell

8

I found that light grey as the undercoat adds too much color. The white produces that silver wood look. Here are three styrene boards and three wood swizzle sticks painted with flat acrylic white and stained with India Ink/alcohol. The styrene was textured with 220 and 50 grit sandpaper

Just a thought
Harold

9

excellent work harold.i’ve been to your site a few times and enjoy it a lot.thanks for sharing.

10

I’ll give the white a try on my next weatered wood project. Like I said, half the fun of weathering is in the experimentation. To me, the success of any weathering project is in the layering. After you get your base coat down you want each succesive layer to be thin enough to allow the previous layer to bleed through. This creates the textured, non-uniformed look that a weathered surface would have.

11

The tank portion of a plastic IHC old time water tower weathered.

Harold

12

Thanks for sharing Harold.

I have an HO Tyco 50ft. flat car with an imitation wood deck. It’s one of the few decent looking HO freight cars Tyco made that wasn’t “Cheesy”. It came from a 1973 train set, courtesy of my late father. I’m converting it into a M.O.W unit and was pondering as to how I could make the deck look more like wood.

I’m going to try a modifed version of your method.

Thanks again!

13

Would this base coat/india ink wash method work on metal as well?

14

The method will work on any material even plaster.

A modified woodland scenics timber tunnel portal, don’t use an India Ink wash it isn’t as effective as either the Rit dye or Dye-na-flow fabric paint on the Kilz2 primer. In fact it really isn’t very good.

Thank you for visiting

Harold

15

As always Harold your work speaks for itself.

Thanks,