I put together some of the Tichy crates and would like to paint over the styrene “gray” color. The assembly instruction suggested using Floquil Maple but they are no longer making that.
Can anyone recommend a good Pollyscale substitute for wood color? Maybe Pollyscale Sand mixed with Reefer White?
Any suggestions are appreciated. Thanks!
Tom
Tom, don’t forget Harold’s web site with a good tutorial.
Thanks, Simon! That’s going to be quite helpful. [:D]
Tom
Tom
Testors sells wood color in a spray can. Bit pricey, but if you don’t need to worry about masking detail work, it’s quick & simple.
Assuming that the crates already have a wood grain detail on them, or at least some detail for the boards, paint them with Testors Wood (either acrylic or enamel). You can brush paint it. Paints of the proper consistency do not leave brush marks… if it’s too thick, thin it so it runs freely off of your stirring stick.
When that’s dry, add a light coat of a black wash, using either black paint or India ink, thinned 10:1. The wash will settle in the nooks and crannies and highlight the detail. The more detail on the underlying model that isn’t obscured by paint, the better it will look.
Was it the Tichy GSC? Mine forced me to learn to try painting wood too. I started with Testors Sand, then used roof brown lightly in an airbrush, distressed it, then an aircraft brown (medium brown), distressed it, added some washes, then thin sand washes & overspray dusting.
For me the base color didn’t matter that much, the layer colors & the amount of wirebrushing will bring in the tone. The light wash & dusting were to lighten it up a bit. It eas for my MofW Excavator.
I use Pollyscale ‘Earth’ as a base coat and then use a wash of india ink and alcohol. Works great for me.
-Bob
To simulate unpainted wood on some G scale plastic rolling stock, I used a mix of craft paint and Polly Scale.
I started with Plaid Folk Art “Barnwood” paint. Looks like this:
After painting the barnwood base, I used Polly Scale Steam Power Black in a very diluted wash.
Tom:
This is a Life Like frieght station that I painted with some burnt umber colors right out of some acrylic bottles of paint from Wal-Mart about a year ago, I just kept experimenting with colors. It is a plastic station but I think it has a wood look.
Thanks,
Robert Sylvester, WTRR
Hi!
It just so happens I’m dealing with “the color of wood” now as I put together the BTS Signal Maintainers Shed (very nice - unusual kit).
As with rock, earth, concrete, etc., there are just so many possibilities of color to choose from without being totally “wrong”. I’m using some Polly scale earth color for the wood platform supports, and will probably use a testors brown - or maybe even wood - paint for the platform tops. After they dry, I’ll do a black wash on them.
Doing this always gives me pause… in the real world of the '50s, railroad decks and most other structures were DIRTY. But if I attempted faithful recreations, the structures would be really depressing, with shades of gray/black the predominent color.
I use mixes of artist’s acrylics and weather with india or sepia ink.Sepia is worth a try if you’ve never used it.
The mix is done by eye as to what looks good on the particular item.
The technique that I used to paint my water and coaling towers to look like is this: Paint them with a base coat of PRR Buff (at the time Polly S, now Polly scale). Let that dry and then I brushed some Floquil Flo-stain (no longer made but I have seen the Doctor Ben’s products that claim to be similar). At least with the Flo-stain, I had to watch it not to overdo the stain in an area as it would dissolve the buff undercoat if the stain was too heavy. I found that two coats were needed to get the wood look correct.