Weathering questions

1. after every layer of paint or chalk, do I have to add clear coat?

Paint, probably not. Chalk, probably. The chalk will continue to move around until you fix it in place. I'm not suggesting that you use 1 color, spray it, use the next color, spray it, and so on.... but You'll get to a point where you'll want to give it a spray coat and see what you end up with before continuing.

With acrylic paint, unless your next planned step involves something that will remove the paint (like something diluted with alcohol), its pretty well stuck on when dry.

2. When adding shocks or powders over the paint, do I add them while the paint is still wet?

Generally, let it dry. There is a technique where you mix the chalk INTO the paint and then apply it. But applying it into the paint after the paint is on there just sounds like a recipe for a mess.

3. What would you guys recommend when it comes to mixing the acrylic paint and water(ie what ratio) or do I just add a little bit of water at a time until I get the consistency that I’m looking for?

The more water, the lighter it'll end up being. There's no golden rule here. You want the paint to run, but how much water will govern the final effect. One word of caution... using straight water will cause the paint to pool at the bottom edges of things. When it dries, it'll leave a "watermark" of paint. Put a little alcohol in it to break up the surface tension, or be prepared to wick the bottom of the panel with a paper towel to prevent that from happening.

Theres many ways to do it. if you're messing with a "throwaway" car, then there's no wrong way to learn. Just make sure you work top to bottom... it never rains up.

Thank you for the advice Boilermaker1!  This really helps me out.  Quick question,  how much isopropyl alcohol would you recommend adding to the water?  If I’m not mistaken you recommend using this method if I’m making a wash correct?

I’ve always used chalk and then fixed with dull coat. The dull coat will really lessen the effect so adjust accordingly

As far as weathering rolling stock and locos I have limited experience. When I was in semi scale I tried fixing chalk with dull coat and that did not work for me probably because I did not do it correctly. But may I suggest trying some techniques on some different painted scrap plastic to get an idea of the different results. Just a thought. Good luck on your weathering.

I've only weathered once.  I used all powders except for the coupler and the truck springs that I painted rust color.  I did all of the powder first and blended.  Then after powder and paint was applied did I spray with a dull clear coat.

When you spray, make sure you hold the can far away enough that you don't blow the powder off the car.

Have Fun!

Ron

Here it was all shinny.

Thanks for the tips Ron!  That is some awesome weathering.  Hoping to become just as good as you guys with weathering.  

Something told me today that someone would mention about keeping back with spray when sealing everything up😉

One other quick question guys before I get started on my weathering project here pretty soon, is do I have to do the entire thing in one sitting? If not is there anything important I should know if I can’t complete the entire thing in a day?  I know this might seem like a stupid question but on the tutorials that I’ve watch this is something that hasn’t been covered. Appreciate any insight you guys can give!

Good luck with your project/s. I have no experience, other then adding mist coats of various flat colors to items I include in scrap metal loads, and therefore cannot give any advice. I plan to start weathering, and have several Weaver shells I picked up before the plant closed with the intent to practice. Fortunately, I have a friend who lives close by, and is a seasoned veteran with whom I will learn from.

I, too, use chalk and Dullcote but I do it a little differently:

1) Remove trucks.

2) Wash cars in mild soap and water to remove all oil. Handle with food-prep gloves thereafter.

3) Spray light coat of Dullcote and let dry. This gives the chalk a little tooth to grab onto.

4) Using the softest brushes I can find - wife's old cosmetic brushes are perfect - apply desired color - use pictures of real things. Use many light coats - not one big glob.

5) Light spray of Dullcote. Sometimes I don't let it completely dry before next coat of powder. Experiment with this.

6) Repeat steps 4) and 5) until desired effect is achieved.

Tips:

a) Dullcote always tones down the effect of the powder. This is good. You don't want a cartoon car - I'm guessing.

b) For the trucks - I use acrylic 'rust' paint for the springs. I use combos of yellow ochre, brown, and black chalks for the rest of the truck fixing each application with Dullcote. Try not to spray Dullcote on wheel electrical contact surfaces. Wipe if off if you do. Scotchbrite pads are your friend.

c) For my money, PanPastels are the best chalks bar none.

Given the average distance an onlooker views your work and the brain's ability to fill in the holes my overall weathering philosophy is not to spend hours weathering a car but rather to make it look like I did.

Dan

@geepboy posted:

I, too, use chalk and Dullcote but I do it a little differently:

1) Remove trucks.

2) Wash cars in mild soap and water to remove all oil. Handle with food-prep gloves thereafter.

3) Spray light coat of Dullcote and let dry. This gives the chalk a little tooth to grab onto.

4) Using the softest brushes I can find - wife's old cosmetic brushes are perfect - apply desired color - use pictures of real things. Use many light coats - not one big glob.

5) Light spray of Dullcote. Sometimes I don't let it completely dry before next coat of powder. Experiment with this.

6) Repeat steps 4) and 5) until desired effect is achieved.

Tips:

a) Dullcote always tones down the effect of the powder. This is good. You don't want a cartoon car - I'm guessing.

b) For the trucks - I use acrylic 'rust' paint for the springs. I use combos of yellow ochre, brown, and black chalks for the rest of the truck fixing each application with Dullcote. Try not to spray Dullcote on wheel electrical contact surfaces. Wipe if off if you do. Scotchbrite pads are your friend.

c) For my money, PanPastels are the best chalks bar none.

Given the average distance an onlooker views your work and the brain's ability to fill in the holes my overall weathering philosophy is not to spend hours weathering a car but rather to make it look like I did.

Dan

Thank you for all the tips Dan!  These are extremely detailed and very helpful😀

@Drewski1992 posted:

Thank you for all the tips Dan!  These are extremely detailed and very helpful😀

By the way Dan, the model then I’m gonna be weathering is a weaver model, so I was wondering when I wash it in mild soap and water before beginning any of the other steps will this mess with the paint?  The Same could be asked for MTH and Lionel models as well.

Also, what kind of soap would you recommend?

Hello Drewski1992

I am into using the pastel artist powders and even trying to use my wife’s old mascara and her brushes.  I’m so glad I ran onto your questions in this forum because I have many of your same ones....

I will ask this one. Dullcote. Is this a brand of matte spray, or is it like calling facial tissue, Kleenex?

my project this week has been weathering  the rock walls for the inside of my tunnel...

1) Dullcote is a Testor's clear matte lacquer spray but is also available in a liquid form, I think. When I say spray the model with Dullcote, I mean just give it a light misting - no direct spray - as that will dislodge the pastel chalk. Sometimes I spray after every chalk application, sometimes after several chalk applications - experiment with this.

2) The choice of soap is not rocket science. I use any available dish detergent heavily diluted with warm - not hot - water and wash with utmost care - no rough rubbing . The idea is to remove any oils that may be on the model from handling or ???. Let air dry unless you have an air oil free spray. Clean food prep gloves after that.

3) I use the softest brushes I can find with one exception. I have a very stiff size #0 brush I bought at an artist store or Michael's or Hobby Lobby. I use it to apply a small amount of chalk - generally red Oxide -  to a specific place like truck springs, handles of shipping containers or rusty rivets followed up by a light Dullcote misting.

4) The trick of applying chalk before the Dullcote is entirely dry is effective if you want heavily saturated color like the insides of gondolas. Be careful here as you don't want your brush to be too laden with Dullcote. If it does get loaded up with Dullcote just take a pair of scissors and trim the sticky bits off the brush.

5) In my train club we do European HO scale models in modules for regional train shows. Sometimes I  overdo the weathering. Fixing

"my whoopsies" can be difficult. I'm known as ,"The Master of Disaster."

Dan

Dan

I have digested your points and appreciate your interest in my question about Dullcote.  

Printed out your information and included in my binder for reference.

What’s  your recommendation as the best distance between the aerosol can and subject while spraying a matte spray over chalk powder?  
I wish not to change the color hue and dullness of the weathered powders while using an spraying the matte....

Seth,

Dullcote will:

1) In general, darken the effect of the chalk application. You will come to appreciate just how much darkening only through experience and allow for this effect when first applying the chalk.

2) If you use the matte/dull version of Dullcote lightly it should have little effect on the desired dullness. So as to not dislodge the chalk powder when I spray with Dullcote, I hold the spray can at least  1 foot/ 30 cms away and wave the can about as I'm spraying. Again, practice, practice, practice.

This whole weathering process can be explained in words just so far. You just gotta get your hands dirty/sticky and learn by  doing. Don't be afraid to make mistakes. Sometimes the screw-ups can look terrific. First mistake = trying to do too much in one pass - sneak up on your desired outcome. That's why I love working with pastel chalks. If I don't like to effect, I can just blow the chalk away = mostly - the little chalk left behind can oft leave a wonderful subtle base on which to proceed.

Dan

Suggestion above is exactly right. Keep the can about a foot or so away and while spraying, keep the can moving side to side. One or two passes, then stop and look. That should do it.

Thank you for your recommendations Geepboy and Jerrman.   Your experience will go a long way with me.

I thought possibly my experience with spray paints and this matte spray might differ.   Now I am assured.

Seth 

Testor's brand DullCoat can be pricey and sometimes difficult to find or ship.

Krylon makes a Clear Matte Finish available at the big box stores in a larger size can and, IMHO, just as effective, that you may want to try out.

@Seth Thomas posted:

Hello Drewski1992

I am into using the pastel artist powders and even trying to use my wife’s old mascara and her brushes.  I’m so glad I ran onto your questions in this forum because I have many of your same ones....

I will ask this one. Dullcote. Is this a brand of matte spray, or is it like calling facial tissue, Kleenex?

my project this week has been weathering  the rock walls for the inside of my tunnel...

Hello Seth, sorry that I wasn’t able to answer your question very quickly. Work has been pretty busy for me and I hadn’t been on the forum in about a week or so. However I think some of the guys here like Dan and several others did a pretty good job of explaining and answering your questions. This is my first time weathering as well and I tend to go with whatever the experience guys are using as far as materials and sprays.  

All the best!

Drew

I totally understand about work the busy work schedule and I have followed all the recommendations and today I installed the rock walls inside my tunnel. 

Pleased with how its going to look.

A good weekend to you Drew!  I'm retired but I must take care of the wife....

Hi guys, just thought I would put up a few photos of the progress on the weathering project I’ve been working on.

it’s not completed yet by any means, but it’s getting there. I still have to do some highlighting and blending with some chalk pastels.

I’m gonna go ahead and critique myself on a couple of things just because I tend to be my own worst critic to be quite honest.

The first thing is I’m pretty pleased with the way everything came out so far, except for my rust spots on the ends of the tank car. I have to admit as a newbie learning this and working off of a prototype photo this area of the car was the hardest to do rust spots on.  You’ll notice that on the sides of the car, the rust streaking looks a whole lot better and was much easier to do then on the ends. Honestly this is one area that I want to perfect at least being able to do better rush streaks/rust spots on the ends of a car.  I’m probably in a future project going to experiment with may be a different way of holding the car or maneuvering it or maybe putting fewer rust spots because the area is very tight there.  I was definitely trying to be very very careful when doing these rust spots and streaking the rust down but as you guys probably know when you’re doing something for the first time sometimes the perfect way that you see it coming out in your head doesn’t always happen that way because you have to experiment with the technique. So it doesn’t always come out perfectly the first time even if you were really trying to be careful and taking your time and really wanted it to come out perfectly. The kick up on the ends of the car and also the wheel spray on the underside of the car I’m very pleased with the way that they turned out.  

The second thing that I’ve learned is in brush selection. I had selected all of my brushes that were similar to the ones that Dan Arnold used in his HO scale weathering projects. However one thing that I noticed is sometimes a brush that you think can be perfectly great for doing a certain area can sometimes actually not work as well as the brush that you thought wouldn’t work.  For example, One of my finer tip brushes actually worked better than the one that was really fine, because the one that was really fine had a tendency when trying to do streaking for the bristle hairs to separate because they were so thin. It turns out the one that I thought was too thick actually worked better for doing streaking simply because the bristles wouldn’t separate easily.  So that being said I’m starting to learn what brushes are actually better for certain things. The brushes that I have for doing kick up under the cars and things like that has actually worked out very very well. It’s just some of the finer tip brushes that I’ve had to kind of experiment with as far as what will work best in certain areas for achieving different effects.

So far overall I don’t think that I’ve really done that badly to be honest. I expected my work to be pretty trashy when I first started doing it but I caught on to a lot of the dry brushing technique’s very quickly and they really do have very good results that they get once you get the hang of it. I’ve been following Dan Arnold’s style of weathering freight cars since I’m just starting out so essentially what I’m doing is using dry brushing technique with acrylic paints and then chalk pastels to highlight and blend certain areas.

One thing that I had to remember with this is to not be too hard on myself especially since this is my first weathering project. It’s really easy for me to be hard on myself because I always push myself to do the best job I possibly can and even though I got a lot of the techniques and was able to execute them very well and they seem to look really good, at some point there was bound to be one technique that may not have come out exactly perfectly on my first project and that I’ll have to kind of work on perfecting that technique in a future project. My point with this is I understand that it is a trial and error form of art and you just have to be patient with yourself and not beat yourself up if you make a mistake. Even if you take your time and are very careful just like anything else in life sometimes there’s going to be an area that may not come out completely perfectly your first time but as you get better and better and experiment with a different technique it will really start to take shape.

i’m still going to be keeping this tanker body to do the DIY project that I’ve been planning and also it’ll be a good way for me too have my first piece to look back on in the future to see how far I’ve come in perfecting my techniques weathering wise.

Any way guys, just thought I’d post an update with a few photos along with some of the things that I had learned so far.

as always I appreciate everyone’s help and support and that has been a huge factor in getting me into this and pushing me to continue doing weather in projects.

as promised here are some photos of what I’ve done so far and I will post another update once I highlight some of the areas with the chalk pastels.

P.S. please pardon the lighting. I know it’s not the best but I tried to take the best shots I could at the time. It was nighttime when I took the shots and the lighting wasn’t the best, but it’s what I had at the time when I was working at the table.

also I did dirty the ends of the car, and the piping along the underside. It might be hard to tell just because the lighting is not that good but it is there and in person you can see it very well.

Hi Drew

     Congratulations on doing some weathering! So many of us fret about track work and scenery then run bright and shiny trains because they are scared to try weathering. You are correct there are no mistakes.

      My method is to remove trucks and coat the car with a flat coat of choice. For trucks i brush on liquid flat coat. Before drying i shake on a dark rust chalk. When dry gently brush off the excess. Same for couplers.

Just a note. Chalk is usually just that, a  colored "dust". Powders often imply a material like chalk with brush activated adhesive included. Bragdons would be an example. They don't get blown off as easily when sealed with a flat coat.

For cars you can use all sorts of materials. Don't forget to srcape/fade the paint also. Look at real pictures to see where the weathering takes place.  A few drops of black ink in alcohol makes a nice dirty wash.

These are just toys and you can always get more. Here is a tank car to give you an idea.

Best

Ray

@Ray Marion posted:

Hi Drew

     Congratulations on doing some weathering! So many of us fret about track work and scenery then run bright and shiny trains because they are scared to try weathering. You are correct there are no mistakes.

      My method is to remove trucks and coat the car with a flat coat of choice. For trucks i brush on liquid flat coat. Before drying i shake on a dark rust chalk. When dry gently brush off the excess. Same for couplers.

Just a note. Chalk is usually just that, a  colored "dust". Powders often imply a material like chalk with brush activated adhesive included. Bragdons would be an example. They don't get blown off as easily when sealed with a flat coat.

For cars you can use all sorts of materials. Don't forget to srcape/fade the paint also. Look at real pictures to see where the weathering takes place.  A few drops of black ink in alcohol makes a nice dirty wash.

These are just toys and you can always get more. Here is a tank car to give you an idea.

Best

Ray

     

Thank you Ray! I appreciate you giving your two cents on how you weather your rolling stock. I know everybody has a different way of weathering their stuff and what looks good to them so I definitely appreciate you sharing. Again it’s just something else for me too soak in when it comes to weathering techniques.

I will be honest though I’m not a guy that wants every piece of rolling stock in my collection weathered.  many of the pieces of rolling stock that I have are actually tribute pieces to railroads that were around at one time and so the main reason that I would get these pieces of rolling stock was for paint schemes and cool graphics. I’m a digital artist so I love stuff like that and I don’t mind the cars like that are shiny and new looking because to me they’re paying tribute to a railroad that existed at one time. So that being said if a car has cool graphics and things like that even pretty paint schemes I really don’t want to dirty it up. I appreciate eye candy stuff to be quite honest and there are many things in my collection that are kind of like that.

That being said though, there are pieces that I have specifically bought in order to be weathered at some point. Usually these are just plain Jane freight cars. They don’t have any cool graphics or paint schemes or logos or things like that they’re just pretty plain. A good example is a Norfolk Southern blue and yellow coil car that I have right now that’s eventually going to get weathered. I got a really good prototype photo from a freight train recently of the exact same car so I’m gonna be using that as a template so to speak to weather the model that I have. Right now the car of course isn’t very realistic looking because typically coil cars are in pretty beat up condition to put it mildly and this one just looks like a plastic shiny model right now. So this is an example of a car that I had bought to specifically dirty up.

The way I see it to each their own taste as far as what they weather.  I guess I’m just weird like that because I don’t like all of my cars weathered because for me it gets a little bit boring.  I like it when there are one or two cars or even a few more in a consist of really bright and pretty paint schemes that are weathered because they really stand out and just to me look better in that kind of scenario rather than every car being weathered.

but again that’s just me😁

Hi Drew

     I couldn't agree more. I too own a few that just will not get weathered for different reasons. The best part is the only person to please is yourself. I have some of my Fathers' prewar trains and will not touch them for weathering. Too sentimental. I don't think they would look good any way. However, I did weather the 225e steamer, pulled the tender in close and updated tender trucks and coupler. That did improve the looks and it pulls a nice number of cars despite being 70+ years old. Do what makes you happy.

Ray

With all due respect, I see lots of long talk along with several overthinkers. If you can’t eventually fully weather an item in less than 2 hrs. by practice, you might be doing more than needed and something is wrong in your process.

Keep it simple and don’t follow what other’ say. It’s actually very simple if you use common sense. Stay away from air brushing, that's for H.O ers.

Just do it.

You might want to try the T.W.S. site as a guide. THE WEATHERING SHOP FRONT PAGE . Or use my links below for ideas. Approaching 2000 recorded weathered items soon.

With over 76 photo albums and 15,000 weathering photos, you might find something to go by. Idea photos are there for you, not me. You must also understand the era you want to model as well.

I endorse the effort!

S.I.R.T.  ontraktwo Custom PRO Weathering,

Nashville

                       If you find you cant do it, email me to have it done correctly.

We appreciate you for emphasizing making weathering simple.

I'm saving your thread to refer to later in my folder.

Priority for my layout now is to complete the covering of the tunnel.

I will definitely try making tankers look weathered one day.   So thanks again for TWS and have a good week!

I too have those engines and cars which will not be changed in appearance.  My dad’s first two Lionel sets he ordered in 1946.

They will be on display separately from all my train collection.  This summer I hung Dad’s sets inside my great grandfather’s travel case.

Looking forward to one day trying my hand at weathering some rolling stock.

Here is the completed scrap tank car body after blending with the chalk pastels and then hitting it with some clearcoat. Still have some other work to do for this project to be complete but the weathering part is done.

Also included are the before photos of the tank car body