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About this blog

A record of weathering work, intended to show both good and bad results, including explanations of what is used and how.

Entries in this blog

Weathering

Dapol O Gauge Jinty

A touch-up job this time. A friend had fitted sound, crew, coal and working lamp to this Jinty and removed paint from the coupling rods and brake gear in doing so.  A half-cupful of Railmatch sleeper grime, weathered black and matt black soon sorted out that little problem.  
Mick Bonwick

Mick Bonwick in Weathering

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Weathering

Dapol O Gauge 14xx No. 1444

Who hangs on to old tins of paint, wherein gloopy remains stick to the bottom? I have an old tin of Humbrol 27004 Metalcote Gunmetal, most of which was used for airbrushing onto wheels and smokeboxes in a black/gunmetal mixture. During a search for suitable buffer head grease I found that the otherwise unusable pigment that remained in the bottom of an improperly closed tinlet had an interesting property. A lump of this goo was attached to a buffer head, smeared about a bit and left to dry. Once
Mick Bonwick

Mick Bonwick in Weathering

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Weathering

Dapol O Gauge 14xx No. 1444

Almost there now. Some MIG Dark Mud pigment has been used to indicate the beginnings of surface corrosion on the chimney, and some Gunmetal metallic pigment has been used to indicate the beginnings of shiny handrail portions in the most used areas. Small amounts are crucial to the success of this type of effect. All pigment applications were done with a filbert brush.   Only one more day to go.    
Mick Bonwick

Mick Bonwick in Weathering

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Weathering

Dapol O Gauge 14xx No. 1444

A dark mix of Railmatch Weathered Black and Frame Dirt has been airbrushed over the top of the boiler, the cab roof and the driving wheel centres. This is to represent the soot present on the former two and the oil on the latter. The photograph that I have been using as a reference shows a much more marked contrast between the wheel rims and the wheel centres, but it does not look quite right to my eye so I have reduced the contrast by using a slightly darker shade of brown.   Black Sm
Mick Bonwick

Mick Bonwick in Weathering

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Weathering

Dapol O Gauge 14xx No. 1444

A layer of Sleeper Grime/Frame Dirt mixture was prepared for airbrushing the sides, using more than the usual amount of white spirit. I wanted to be able to apply very thin layers, even thinner than my usual approach. Why a mixture of the two colours? Laziness, basically. My pot of one was empty and I couldn't be bothered to find another. The two colours are so similar that I didn't think it would matter.   The whole of both sides and ends was given a thin application of this mixture a
Mick Bonwick

Mick Bonwick in Weathering

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Weathering

Dapol O Gauge 14xx No. 1444

The cab roof comes off!   Heart in mouth moment when I removed the engine from its wheel-spraying cradle - something fell on the floor. Only the roof, though, not being held in place by the two small magnets any more. This gave me the idea of adding some grime to the easily accessible cab interior, so out came the MIG Dark Wash again and some was applied to the brightly coloured pipework. Not covering the whole assembly with grime, but just hinting that there had been some work going o
Mick Bonwick

Mick Bonwick in Weathering

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Weathering

Dapol O Gauge 14xx No. 1444

Out of the box this locomotive has a rather shiny smokebox, much more so than I would have expected. Before going any further I decided to apply a layer of Testor's Dullcote to that area so that pigments could be applied at a later date and that I could be sure that they would stick.   Dullcote dries very quickly into a usable state. These photographs were taken only two minutes apart.       My masking wasn't very good, so the Dullcote has landed on part
Mick Bonwick

Mick Bonwick in Weathering

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Weathering

Dapol o Gauge 14xx No. 1444

It's the turn of the airbrush now. The inderframe will be discoloured using Railmatch Sleeper Grime, applied with an Iwata Eclipse SBS. The driven wheels are turned while the paint is sprayed, to prevent there being a patchy finish to the rims. With N Gauge and OO/HO Gauge engines this can be done with a PP9 battery, but this doesn't work with O Gauge. I use two pieces of scrap OO Gauge rail screwed into place through a piece of wiring terminal block set at the width of the wheel treads and bent
Mick Bonwick

Mick Bonwick in Weathering

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Weathering

Dapol O Gauge 14xx No. 1444

The chassis of this model includes a representation of the inside motion, visible in the gap 'twixt boiler and running plate. It's bright red! I didn't want to hide this completely, so decided to add a layer of wash to the parts that were visible. The rigger brush was ideal for this task, enabling just enough wash to be deposited.    
Mick Bonwick

Mick Bonwick in Weathering

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Weathering

Dapol O Gauge 14xx No. 1444

Buffer beams get dirty. They're not alone in that, obviously, but this aspect of weathering doesn't always get the attention it deserves, and I include myself there.   There is much opportunity for detail weathering in O Gauge, so I decided to put a little more effort into this subject by applying a wash to the varied protruberances on the buffer beams. A straightforward process, involving a rigger brush, white spirit and MIG Dark Wash.   The brush bristles are first loaded w
Mick Bonwick

Mick Bonwick in Weathering

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Weathering

Dapol O Gauge 14xx No. 1444

The Sharpie is indeed used for removing the bright shiny finish of the wheel rims, and the coupling rods, too. I have found in the past that airbrushed paint on these bare metal surfaces can rub off too easily, and even flake off  if applied too thickly. I read, many years ago somewhere, that this could be prevented by blackening the surfaces before applying the paint. At the time I didn't fully understand the term, 'blackening', and used a marker pen. That looked blue to me, rather than black (
Mick Bonwick

Mick Bonwick in Weathering

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Weathering

Dapol O Gauge 14xx No. 1444

A full story for this subject - I remembered to take photographs with my newly serviced camera while doing it. The plan is to weather it in a used but serviced condition, working from a photograph in a book from my reference library.   I'll be using a selection of materials from my usual stock and will hopefully remember to introduce them as the steps progress. Being a small engine it sits quite comfortably on the painting turntable.   Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll b
Mick Bonwick

Mick Bonwick in Weathering

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Weathering

A Pair of Bulleids

Two recently completed tasks, one rebuilt Battle of Britain and one unrebuilt West Country.       The camera has gone away for a jolly good seeing to so, with any luck, normal service will be resumed soon.   The same colours have been used for both of these locomotives. See if you can work out what they were.
Weathering

Hornby Class 60 Colas Rail Freight. Step 4 - Airbrushed Underframe Completed.

Problems with my camera (or maybe the lens) have disrupted progress recording with this subject. I have managed to salvage one shot of the airbrushed underframe, though, and here it is.     Once the main colour was finished, an application od MIG Dark Wash was run into all the detail areas with a rigger brush. This served to highlight the shadow areas and bring out the intricate details of the bogies.
Weathering

Hornby Class 60 Colas Rail Freight. Step 3 - Underframe Airbrushing.

The three colours are mixed in the airbrush paint cup, but thinners (white spirit) are placed first. That is because  the first thing to reach the nozzle is then thinners rather than unmixed paint. The latter will block the nozzle before you even start the weathering. When mixing colours, start with the lightest and add the other colour(s) using small amounts at a time. In this case the orange was added to the thinners first (a small drop), the leather was added next (one brush load) and the bla
Weathering

Hornby Class 60 Colas Rail Freight. Step 2 - Underframe Preparation.

The underframe is where I invariably start with any model because everything that follows can be done with the model on its wheels.   I was introduced to foam cradles, that originated as worktop edging protective covers, by a friend who liberated some from a skip. I use them for most models that I work on now. Having exhausted the supply that I, in turn, liberated from waste disposal receptacles, I decided to buy some direct from a manufacturer, but had to order a minimum quantity. I n
Weathering

Hornby Class 60 Colas Rail Freight. Step 1 - The Plan.

Something a little more modern, just for a change.   My reference library doesn't contain any photographs of this locomotive in this livery, so I looked through one of Strathwood's "Looking Back" series and found a Transrail liveried example that was depicted in a fairly well used but cleaned state. Sides and roof looked fairly clean, but the underparts were not.   The tools and materials list:   Iwata Eclipse SBS airbrush - not a large volume of paint to be used, b
Weathering

A Busy Weekend

This weekend has been taken up with some weathering in unusual circumstances. Because the Missenden Abbey Railway Modellers Autumn weekend could not take place at the Abbey, an online event was arranged to provide some small compensation. This event included a little bit of weathering:   https://www.missendenrailwaymodellers.org.uk/index.php/virtual-missenden-recordings/
Weathering

Accurascale HUO Hopper

This isn't the only place you can see examples of weathering. One of Accurascale's HUO hoppers has been worked on and the account of it can be seen here:   https://accurascale.co.uk/blogs/lets-get-involved/wagon-weathering-with-mick-bonwick-lets-get-involved
Weathering

Something Agricultural for Christmas

Back in the days of Summer I had a go at a 1/43rd scale Ferguson TE20 - a Little Grey Fergie. I had found a couple of these, after much searching, and wanted to work on one and leave the other pristine, just to show how much of a difference could be made with just Dullcote, washes and pigments. Unfortunately I didn't do a particularly good job when using my smartphone to take the photographs!     This will keep you going until January.   https://www.flickr.com/phot
Mick Bonwick

Mick Bonwick in Weathering

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