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Weathering Freight Cars 101, Part 2 by Bret Shook In the second of this two part article Bret shares some weathering techniques using chalks. |
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Paints and solvents can give off harmful fumes. Please follow manufactures' warnings when using them. |
So far we have done everything with an airbrush and thinned out paint (See Part 1 of this Article.). Now we are going to use chalks or weathering powders. There are many different types of chalks or powders available, but I prefer the “Weather System” produced by Bragdon Enterprises. These powders are available at train shows and hobby shops. Here again, the brand of product you prefer and the results you will achieve can only be determined by experimentation. Don’t be afraid to try something new and different. These powders come in many different colors and can be used for many effects. I buy every color of rust that I can find, along with black, gray, and sand. I use a large piece of ¼” plywood (around 1.5’x1.5’) and put small piles of each color on it like an artist’s pallet. Put down some newspaper to catch any spills. |
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To apply the powders that I use, I take a soft paintbrush and “load it up” with the powder. It is then rubbed into the desired area and the excess brushed off back onto the pallet for reuse. I blend many colors together to achieve a natural effect of rust and dirt. Don’t panic if the effect of the rust or dirt seems dramatic on the car, we can take care of that in a minute. |
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| I want to cover how I use some of the powder colors. The black soot color can be used for the roofs of boxcars, on the inside of empty hoppers, and on the outside of any car. I use the rust colors around the ribs of hoppers and gondolas, and on ladder rungs, couplers and wheel faces. Rust is also very heavily used on the inside of hoppers and gondolas. Don’t be afraid to mix and blend the different shades of rust to create highlights of older rust and new bright rust. The gray and sand colored powders are good to represent spillage from loading covered hoppers. Rub it on all around the hatches and down the sides of the car. I sometimes combine another effect on covered hoppers to better represent spillage. That is to brush some thinned white or light gray paint down the sides in streaks to represent rain washing the powdered cement or other bulk commodities down the side of the car. It just depends on the effect you like best. | |
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| Well, I promised you we would take care of that dramatic effect that the chalk had on your car, so here you go. When you clear coat over most weathering powders, some of the effect will basically soak up and go away. This is both good and bad. It is a phenomenon that takes a little getting used to in order to gauge how much chalk to use in the first place. Once again it takes practice. What I do is clear coat the entire car and then come back and re-chalk areas that I want to be highlighted. This works especially well on cars that will not be handled very much. You have to find a middle ground between lots of detail in your weathering with powder or chalk and durability.
My favorite clear-coat is a mixture of Testor’s dull coat and gloss coat sprayed through an airbrush. I use about 2 parts dull coat to 1 part gloss coat and then thin this mixture 1 to 1 with Testor’s airbrush thinner. The reason for adding the gloss coat is that dull coat alone will chalk up your clear coat and give it a milky appearance. You can experiment with the mixture to get anything from a flat to a semi-gloss as desired for a certain application. |
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| This picture shows the car with clear coat applied only to the left side. |
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Well, I hope that I have been able to encourage you to take the first step and give it a try! If you have any questions or have decided that you want weathering, but don’t want to do it yourself, feel free to drop me an e-mail and we can discuss it. My e-mail address is Pntntrains@aol.com. And most of all, remember to have fun and enjoy it! |
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