WEATHERING

I don't want to delve into the art of weathering as for locomotives or freight cars, but a similar weathering job is needed for the structure you have just built.I tend to weather my scratchbuilt structures using a variety of coloured chalks, - Light Grey - Black - White - Rust and Yellow, plus a bottle of Indian ink.

If you want to weather your structure some other way, that's fine. If you want to use chalk and ink, here's how I did mine.(I made a small box approximately 6 inch's square, out of card , and placed some partitions into it, to hold the chalk scraping's.)Scrape some of the grey chalk into a container ready for use. With a pen and Indian ink, scribe (not too much ink mind) down the gap in the strip wood. This will highlight the wood effect. When this part of the procedure is dry, grab a small but stiff brush, (Mine is 1/2 an inch wide) and dip it into the box with the desired chalk colour. (I used grey) Now, brush it onto the roof of the structure brushing downwards. If you get too much chalk on the structure, just wipe or blow it away.

For the main structure I used a small amount of rust and gently brushed the sides, the ink between the strip wood brings out the details. When you are happy with what you have achieved, you will need to spray the structure a Matt varnish to protect the work done. Also the chalks won't come off on your fingers.Photo number five shows the finished structure with a walkway added out of card and strip wood.

Well that's it folks, how to make a true wood looking structure. I can tell you that the end results justify all the work involved.

Now that you know how to build a simple structure, try your hand a something more involved, the principal is the same. Here is a building I scratchbuilt for my layout...

Here's the inside at night...

Have fun

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Written by Paul Templar
http://www.badger-creek.co.uk/