Well I got a bug up my behind today to do the main topcoat and weathering on this little sucker today. Progress on my Panther is progressing while I've been waiting for the oils on this thing to dry.
I wanted to try the hairspray and salt weathering technique. I've seen results that can look too speckley since all the salt grains are the same size. To combat this I decided to through some salt in our coffee grinder to try to pulverize some of it, to give my salt a variety of sizes.
The first time I tried this on a test M41 I used my airbrush to apply the hairspray. This time I chose not to, to spray it directly out of the can. The results were the same, so in the future I'll skip the airbrush step with the hairspray. One might have slightly more control, but I believe it is marginal.
I then sprinkled the salt dust over the model, but this was hard to control. I certainly got more on the model in some places than I wanted, but this little guy is a test mule anyway....thats what it's for is to make my mistakes here.
A couple hours later, after the hairspray had thoroughly dried I came back to spray the topcoat. For this I used Vallejoy Model color, in this case about a 60-40 mix of desert yellow and white. I could have used more white I think.
After allowing this to dry a couple hours (I should have waited longer, I know) I went about removing the salt. KuKlinski had warned me it was easy to go too far here, and boy was he right! It took almost nothing to remove the salt under a slow trickly of tap water with a stiff-bristled brush. In fact I did go too far, in my opinion, but not extermely-so. Had I let the Vallejo dried better I think it would have been more controlable. No matter...I dabbed on some of the topcoat color here and there to lessen the chipped effect. After that I started the first in a series of washed the model will get.
In all I'm quite pleased with the effect, especially for my first go-round.
