I am trying to weather some of my rolling stock, for example, a 50’ BN boxcar, green with white letters, I would like to make it look as if the paint was faded without making it look all that dirty, make the white lettering not so blinding. I could put in the sunshine for a year, but I was hoping some of you could give me some advice that might be a bit faster. Thanks Mike
Go get some pastel chalks at an art store. See if you can find a shade of green that’s about two shades lighter. Weather the car with the light green chalks (being careful not to get green on the trucks or couplers). Spray with Dullcote. Repeat until desired effect achieved.
Serve with other cars. Have a beer. Enjoy!
Try mixing white with green to get a lighter shade. Then mix that 50/50 with a flat finish. Dilute that 50/50 with thinner. Then overspray the whole car. Other weathering can be added after that if you wish. Once you see what this mixture produces, you’ll be able to adjust it to your preferences.
Next time you are at a swap meet, get a handful of scrap car bodies to practice weathering on. You won’t be afraid to try if you won’t be ruining anything.
mikesmowers;
If I understand your querry correctly you are asking an impossibility - you are simply not going to be able to make fresh paint look like it is ancient paint. Your only solution, as I see it, is to repaint the car - take a Great Northern green of one manufacturer or another and dilute it down with white paint - this. of course, is going to require stripping the original paint and then redecalling the repainted model which is a lot of work. I did something of this nature with a locomotive one time - an SW1 that was approaching its final days - I repainted the locomotive in a no-longer-used houseroad color scheme and used white to fade my coloration to give the impression of a twenty-year old paint job.
Why not just “dullcote it” and pretend
ive read where you can dullcote first then apply rubbing alcohol to make paint look faded.
check out these sites
www.modeltrainsweathered.com
www.griffsgrimeshop.com
tom
Spray the car with dullcote then apply a lite mist of 70% rubbing alcohol, the alcohol reacts with the dullcote and looks like faded paint.( the more alcohol the more faded it looks)
The best thing is if you don’t like the effect just re-apply the dullcote and it returns to normal.
You may want to apply rust streaks and other things before you dullcote.
bill
There are two completely different areas to play with here…
- dirt changing the appearance of the car
- sun fade.
The good news is that, as you cannot replicate the effect of real sunshine on real paint -the real paint on real boxcars-) You will basically create an illusion with the same “weathering” processes.
I have 8 stone (112lbs) of dog telling me it’s time to go for my walk… will continue later…
Have recovered…
Before we go anywhere else… all colour is “perceived”. This involves two things… light and what your brain does with it (via you eyes, optic nerves and so on). This does matter. There is also a vast difference between natural lightS and artificial lightS. Then you get a whole bunch of bnches of things that get involved once you start taking photographs and reproducing them.
Just as a start on light… pick any photo you like on your PC/laptop, print it out and then hold it up next to your monitor with exactly the same pic on it. They will look different. This is because light is effectively coming through the screen while it is coming over your shoulder and bouncing back off the pigments stuck on the face of the piece of paper. Even the quality of white paper will change what you see.
Another example… what is the colour of your TV screen when it is turned off? Some sort of grey/green probably… okay so when you watch an old Black and White movie what colours do you see on screen? they cannot be true black nor true white.
Next trick (we’re getting closer to weathering the railcar here)… take one finger (wrap it in a tissue or screen cleaner if you’re fussy) and wipe an X corner to corner of your TV screen… sit back and watch anything you choose… you may be aware of the X at first but after a very short time your brain will filter it out… this is because the X isn’t any threat and is a nuisance factor to what you want to do - watch the programme
I have not tried this myself, but I would think it’d work. It’s based on the concept of “removing paint” rather than applying paints or chalks over the surface. Buy some Easy Lift Off, which is a mild paint remover. Apply just a bit to a Q-Tip and lightly rub the surface until you remove enough material to where you’re satisfied with the look. Good luck, and if you try this, please let me know! [;)]
What about just dullcote and a few drops of white paint.
Removing paint will… remove paint… ultimately through to the plastic… it will not change the pigment in the remaining paint.
However, that reminds me… Some model cars are “self coloured” rather than painted. This knobbles anything you might try to do with the paint including the usual effects of dullcote… so if dullcote isn’t working this may be why.
Some cars (Accurail CNW covered hoppers for one) are fairly thin sided with self-coloured sides that have a tendency to be partially translucent. These look extremely bright and don’t respond well to surface treatments. I stumbled on the trick of absolutely smothering the insides of these car bodies with thick matt black. This stopped light penetration and also turned light that got into the side back round. It occurs to me that the black will have changes the light coming back out… so it would be possible to vary the theme by pasting the inside with white, grey or whatever…
As far as I’m aware drops of paint in dullcote will mess with the reactions and change what is going on… I think that it will tend to smear/smudge rather than give a fade effect.
I used about three eye droppers full of reefer white, one of grimy black to about an ounce of water, more or less, you’ll have to experiment here. What you are trying to do is get a semi-opaque wash to spray on car. I practiced on sprues until I got the right shade to lighten color without covering everything up. After you get right shade you can paint car, let it dry, then do other weathering. light dustings of grimy black on roof and down sides and ends, then dusting of dirt(browns and tans) from bottom up. Add rust streaks, then dulcote.
Chalks, white and lighter shades of green will also give you desired effect, but I use dulcote first, let it dry, then do chalks, and dulcote again. I like the first coat of dulcote because the chalk adheres better.
It will take some practice, good luck.
Try here. www.modeltrainsweathered.com/forum/