On this model I decided to use one of the weathering powders that are available through a couple of different manufactures.  As you can see from the large splashes of color,  I found out the hard way that they don’t act like chalks.  Instead of being chalk they are made directly from pigment that has been ground into powder.

The large splashes of color actually helped the final look by breaking up the look of the building, making it look like many of the brick buildings I see around in Oakland, CA.  Using real buildings as inspiration for modeling has excellent results.  I often finding myself taking pictures of buildings, not because I like the building, but because it has a texture that I can use on a model with a similar design.

After making sure that I had covered all of the brick on the building I took the time to carefully touch up all of the details.  This was very important to do at this time because I intended to use my airbrush for the final weathering coat.  After the touch-up work I used fine ballast from Woodland Scenics and covered all of the roof surfaces.  I attached it using their Scenic Cement, which I must say is an amazing product.  I found that painting the surface to be covered with thin layer of the glue and then sprinkling the ballast on worked well.  I was able to use a medicine dropper and fill in any areas that I missed.  A light dry-brush of light gray and white picked out the detail of the “graveled” roof.

After assembling the major structures I decided to permanently attach the smaller building to the larger building.  I didn’t like how the kit had it as two separate buildings.  I removed the shorter wall on the smaller structure and fitted it against the larger one.  I used some of the scrap pieces to fill in the gaps, covered with putty.  After waiting for the putty to dry, I touched up the joints.

I started the painting the brick by using white paint and creating a wash.  After letting it dry for a couple of minutes I used a rag and wiped the paint from the bricks, leaving it in the mortar.

The picture above shows the wash in place before being wiped off.  The following picture shows the walls after I have wiped off the excess paint.  As you can see it stays fairly bright, but this will be taken care of by using chalks to bring down the tone and making it dirty.

As you can see in this picture I used old t-shirts as rags, something that I have a large supply of as part of my job includes welding

The next step was too put a primer coat on all of the major pieces.  I did not worry too much about the inside as I don’t intend on putting any interiors into these buildings.  My reasoning on this is that most of the commercial buildings I see are so coated in dirt and grime that you can’t see anything through the windows anyways.

I found a useful trick when spray painting, a way of curing drips from too heavy of spray (it can happen to anyone who is not paying enough attention).  I used canned air to spread the drips out, making it almost impossible to see where they had been.   I suppose that this technique might work with airbrushing as well (just turn the paint off and spray) but I hope not to need it.

Once the primer had dried I airbrushed the brick color onto the walls.  In the process of this I managed to run out of my primary color and had to go to the hobby store to get more.  Unfortunatly they were out of the exact color.  I chose a couple of other similar colors and used them to fill in as needed.  In the long run this actually helped in that it changed the color of the brick in different areas, helping out with the weathering.  It took me about 3 coats to get the red to completely cover the primer color.

I think that this picture was taken after the second coat, as it shows some bare patches near the top.

My newest project was the Champion Packing Co. from Walthers Cornerstone Series.  I became interested in this model because some of my relatives work in the meat packing industry.

After cleaning the flash from the walls and removing them from the sprues, I test fit them and held them in place with blue painter’s tape.  Assembling the walls in this manner allowed me to quickly glue the walls together using a solvent type cement.  I found that if I applied pressure on each joint about 5 min. after I had applied the glue that it formed a much cleaner and tighter bond.  Any excess I wiped off as quickly as possible.

I built the other major assemblies before removing the tape from each.  When using solvent type cement it can be important to leave it until the glue has had enough time to dry thoroughly.  The most difficult assembly was the smokestack.  The parts were slightly warped and this added to the difficulty.  Unfortunately I broke one of the sections during the assembly process.  This ended up not being much of a problem as I was able to glue the pieces back together.  A little putty applied in the correct place made the crack invisible.  The emery board was very useful in sanding parts to ensure a good fit.

After wiping off the excess paint to color the grout in between the bricks I glued the acetate on the window frames and doors.  The reccomendation from most sources is to use some form of white glue to hold it in place, but as I intended to weather the building so that the glass would not really be clear anyways, I used Zap-a-Gap.  This allowed me to install the “glass” much faster than using white glue would have done.  Here is a picture of the building after all the windows and doors had been installed:

The next step was to airbrush a layer of dirt on the building.  Unfortunatly for me I did not thin out the paint far enough so it ended up leaving some rather large splatters.  This ended up working out in the long run as I then used chalk to blend everything together.  Here is a picture showing the roof with one side showing the airbrush and the other showing the chalk blending it in:

I also used chalk to blend on the rest of the building, using a piece of sandpaper to grind the chalk into a fine powder.  I usually use a couple of different colors and use the application brush to blend them.  Here is a picture showing work on the walls of the building:

As you can see in the picture, I also used the chalk on the windows which had the effect of making them very hard to see through (just like most industrial buildings that I see in Oakland, CA).