Okay, well, it’s not new. It’s a Tyco kit I got at a train show for seven bucks, and from the look of the box, it could be twenty years old, no way for me to tell.
I really just wanted the spout, so I could scratchbuild my own tower from wood, and I still might end up doing that, but since I had the styrene kit here and it was clogging up my workbench, I decided to go ahead and finish it as is, just to see how it turned out.
Four of the eight crossbraces in the supporting truss were missing from the kit. I found some scraps slightly larger than the original members and sanded them down to match in size, glued them together, and they survived all abuse since. Fingers crossed, the replacements are pretty delicate.
The raw wood finish is supposed to represent wood that’s been outside, but only for ten years or so, not 150 years.
I started with a technique detailed by Harold Minky, Walmart white acrylic craft paint thinned to 50% with water, let dry, then one drop of black india ink in about 30 ml of 70% isopropal alcohol. That generated a severely aged wood surface, too much for a water tower that was supposed to be pretty new in 1890.
I used artist’s pastels to reverse some of that aging by bringing back some original wood color. Started with a muddy yellowish brown, sort of a tan color and hit that pretty hard all over. Next, some very small and isolated highlights in rust red and dark rust red. It didn’t really gel until I brushed on some powdered black chalk. Lightly overall, then pretty heavily near the bottoms of each member where the rain splashes up mud and organic material onto the wood. The black also highlights the wood grain detail, but it’s easy to over do too. I’ve thought about a few touches of funky dark yellow green to simulate fungus and moss, but so far, haven’t had the guts.
Be advised, all colors of powder
