World War II Project - Return to Normandy - The Gangs all Here - Recovery

 I sat down with these and finished them up. First thing I did was stir my matte varnish really, really well! I used that to cut the glossy shine down and give a nice matte surface for the pigments to adhere too.

First the dust up. I applied some dusty colored pigments to the top surfaces and the bogies and tracks. I wet that down with white spirits and then wiped off the excess with a makeup sponge. Maybe a little heavy but not bad.

I followed that up with some more pigments. This time I used the Pan Pastels and applied three layers.

Reaper Miniatures - Shipping Container - Calling it Done

I managed to scrap together a little time over the weekend to work on the shipping container. At this point I'm just going to call it done. There are certainly other things that I could do to it, but I think I need to put it on the finished shelf at this point.

I tightened up some of the graffiti and added BONES to the other end spot. That proved to be a lot harder than I thought it would be since it stretched across the doors and latches. Not to mention that the Reaper Spring Green that I used doesn't have very good coverage and I was trying to use it over something a little on the dark side.

I did a quick going over everything with the pan pastels, to bring back a little rust, add some dirt and give some edges a little highlighting. 

I can't hardly stand to look at it any more you will find the finished product in all its glory after a few more step by step pictures.

Fixed some of the black edging that as missing

Pretty much left this side alone at this point

The beginning of the BONES graffiti

Going with a lighter edging, Reaper Spring Green (MSP)

Tried to fill in the white. After this was dried I applied a pin wash along the latches and hinges.

The pan pastels, which I apply with both the sponge brush (on the bottom) and a regular brush. Its just like applying pigments but definitely less messy.

Building Calamity 15 - Row House #2 - Weathered and Finished

After the chores were finished for the day (I may have been putting off doing the laundry a little to long) I sat down to do a little weathering work. I finished the chipping process on the eaves and the main building. I think I have decided that using the acrylic chipping fluid doesn't always work very well, however, I adding a little brushwork seemed to even things out a bit. This one saw a lot of work with the pan pastels on both the siding and the roof. I think the extra work on the roof really made it pop, I'm very please with that aspect of this building.

Again I'm not sure if either of these buildings will actually be part of the board but since they will be mounted on foam sabots I should be able to do something that will allow me to switch out buildings and change the layout of the town from time to time. I could even see constructed a burned out version of a building if it happened during a game. I could do a little process of creating and empty site and then a building under construction and finally create the finished version of the new building on the lot. Not sure I'm willing to go to quite that much work but it might be an interesting exercise for a building or two.

Tonight's finishing work

Exposing the chips from the chipping fluid and then add some more with the brush.

A little flash let's you see the interior.

Difficult to see the effects of the weathering from the pan pastels but the bottom boards have two layers of dirt and then a bit more of whitish grey to further dull the green. The roof has received some more work as well.

The row houses ready for a game.

Weathering - C&S #22

I needed something a little different to work on so I pulled my Bachmann 2-6-0 off the shelf to see what I could do with it. This is lettered for the Colorado & Southern and represents (more or less) engine #22. Now the timer period for Calamity actually precludes this engine existing but since its for game purposes rather than model railroading purposes I'm okay with that.

I really just wanted to experiment with this one a bit. While I like the weathering it seems to be to subtle to really show up well in the photos. It was also a pretty quick job so I didn't really take any WIP photos.

I found a shot I had taken of #22 sometime ago in pristine, out of the box, condition

Kind of mid stream. Basic black has been softened with grays, getting ready to add some dirt and a little rust

Finished, Fireman's side

Finished, Engineer's side

My Weathering Tools & Supplies

I had a question about what I use to do my weathering. While I was at my desk cleaning up prior to a painting session I snapped a few quick pictures of my primary tools.

From left to right, sponges, sponge handles, cheap brushes (mostly chip with a couple rounds) and Prismacolor pencils. The pencils are really handy when you need to just hit an edge, I have white, burnt sienna, raw sienna, burnt umber and raw umber.

Pan Pastels. I purchase mine from Stoney Creek Designs and Roger includes a wrapper to go around the outside with the color name and an approximation of the color inside. Quite handy when they are stacked up on a shelf.

All the information you need is underneath

This is a cake, so no messy loose powders. It also holds very well to the model.

The sponge tools for the Pan Pastels. Applying with the sponges is the easiest way. You can also erase them from the model with a regular pencil eraser

MiG pigments are seeing less use than before, but they still have their place in my weathering arsenal.

And here is one of the reasons why. Its very easy to mix the loose powder to get a different color tone. Hard to do this with the Pan Pastels.

Freight Cars for Calamity - Step by Step Weathering - Wrapping it Up

Up to this point all the previous steps have really just been prep to get to the fun part. Especially in the case of the gondola since I had to cut apart my decals to get them to fit between the stake pockets. The reality is that the weathering process itself doesn't take very long, it gets stretched out trying to take pictures (or remembering to take pictures).

The next step for the gondola is to get some paint on the boards on the interior sides and floor. What I want to do here is show paint worn away by heavy use. The normal load for these gondolas was probably coal since the C&N had its own fleet of drop bottom hoppers for ore. However, I'm sure that they were pressed into service to carry various ores as needed. Boulder County is mostly mined for gold ore and tungsten although there were silver mines as well but none that were actually served by the railroad. I drybrushed some of the upper edges of the outside with a greyish brown paint and gave a heavy coating on the inside, leaving more of the original red in the corners and edges where the sides come together with the floor.

I then followed up with a burnt umber wash made from Liquitex Ink and distilled water. Colorado water is a little on the hard side and I try to keep the minerals out of my paints as much as I can by using distilled water.

Now all of that ink needs to dry before I can start applying pigments to it. Otherwise you can create quite a mess when dry pigment meets wet ink. Its not pretty, but it can be cleaned up when it happens.
With the gondola drying its time to turn to the boxcar. I want to try a different technique on this one involving Isopropyl Alcohol (rubbing alcohol you can get it at the grocery store or your local drugstore. I buy the 99% pure stuff) and dry pigments. I'll create a wash with this and see how that goes. Remember weathering is all about experimenting and thinking outside the lines a bit. Although its probably smarter to try something new on a cheap test car first!

For this one I used MiG pigments, their Cargo Dust and Black Smoke. The Black Smoke is to strong by itself so I tried to lighten up a bit with the Cargo Dust.

To this mixture I added the Isopropyl Alcohol. You want a wash so keep adding till you get something that just rolls right back to the bottom when you swipe your brush against the side. Keep in mind you are using alcohol and it evaporates fast (especially if you are in a high dry climate like mine)! I started on one side and proceeded to work my way around the boxcar.

Still much darker than I anticipated

I loaded up a brush with clean alcohol and proceeded to swab down the sides again. Wiping off the brush every few strokes to get rid of the excess.

That looks better

Roof is a bit uneven at this point but some additional steps latter on will help smooth it out.

In a couple of spots the alcohol started to penetrate the layer of dullcote and wiped away some of the lettering, mostly on the capacity and wt numbers on the left. It actually looks good so I didn't worry about but be aware that this can happen and go slowly least you wipe away all your decal or dry transfer work.

The problem with this particular technique is I really lost the faded look that I had started with. Maybe a thinner more directed wash would have helped maintain that effect or the two techniques just shouldn't be used on the same car. This also has to dry but you can come back with more alcohol later and continue to clean it up if you feel the need to. This is one way to set pigments, the resulting finish won't rub off without some serious effort.

Now its time to apply some straight up dry pigments. I'm using my Pan Pastels along with one another one from MiG (because, once again I put my Bragdon pigments in a safe place). While the best way to apply MiG pigments is still with a brush the best way to apply the Pan Pastels is with a very sponge. When I bought my set from Stoney Creek he included a couple of handles and variety of sponges to fit on the ends along with a couple of the big sponges for large areas. While you can brush the Pan Pastels on I have found that the sponges are definitely more effective. I was quite happy to find the Caboose Hobbies had a full kit of the brushes for the handles so I have a bunch. They come in different shapes so you can adjust to the surface you are working on.

Much like painting I like to start with the darkest pigment at the bottom edges of the car in this case I decided to use Burnt Sienna Extra Dark. On the gondola I kept it on the bottom frame, on the boxcar I went up a little bit on the sides (and its not easy to see in the pictures).

This really doesn't take very long and you don't have to wait for it to set so you can go straight to the next pigment. Next up was straight Raw Umber. I applied it starting at the top edge of the previous color to soften that line a bit and took it up a bit higher on the side.

The last application was with a brush using the MiG Pigment Gulf War Sand, which is a nice dusty color

Now the roof of the boxcar needs a little attention. It needs a lighter layer of soot which should even out the surface a bit. For this I'm using Neutral Grey Extra Dark.

Its really hard to see in the photos but I followed all of this up with a Burnt Sienna Prismacolor pencil run across the top of all the metal components to rust them up a bit. And that about wraps it up. I put the trucks back on and these are ready to hit the rails.

The gondola could probably use a bit more work, there is a lot of grain visible in the side boards and I really didn't bring them out very well and I'm not completely happy with the interior drybrushing or the final coat of dust on the outside. On the other hand sometimes they just have to look good enough and this one definitely falls into that category.

I'm quite pleased with the boxcar although I'm disappointed that my grimy wash really killed the faded look I wanted. I'm not going to go back and do anything about it but I will keep it in mind for future projects and there are certainly a number of those coming up. 

I'm happy enough with my custom decals that I'll go ahead and bring out the passenger cars and get started on those which should be a pretty quick job. I'm still working on trying to perfect the Switzerland Trail of America logo for the C&N boxcars though. The C&N boxcars are going to get a little extra work as well. I thought that the ladder on the right side was molded on it looked like to much work to just try and shave off. However, I discovered that its actually a separate piece and can be pulled off without to much effort. I have some new grab irons ordered and I'll be installing those on C&N boxcars as the next step there.

So more work on those and of course there is a railroad station to get finished up as well. September should be another productive month as I continue work on the different parts of Calamity.