Hello everyone
I came seeking your expert advice.I started to build again last year after a 15 year break.I love the site great stuff here I have started building my first diorama ,1/35, d-day ,french barnyard.I built the barn out of balsa and am really happy with it but now the hard part.does anyone here have any ideas for painting it so it has a nice grey weathered look?.Any suggestions would be much appreciated thanks,shawn.

Ola Carleton.

First of all welcome to the site..... I hope you will feel yourself at home here... which I don`t think will take long.

What I usually do to weather wood is the following and I`m talking about Balsawood here as that works like a dream for this method. For the greyish unlackered wood often used on the french barns. I take panzer grey. Dilute it (not in precise measure... just till it feels right. and with a big brush (it goes easier and faster with a big brush. I paint all the wood with it. Now you might want to repeat this a couple of times till you reached the "right" tone of grey. Also you can add more layers of other colours too of course. It is quite easy to do. Greys, and Dark greens do a very good job in weathering wood. you can also add a touch of black. Make sure to add nail holes too and in every nailhole you should drop a little drip of diluted Rustcolor.
The planks in the following picture are done with a couple of layers of diluted panzergrey and one layer of darkgreen


I hope you can do something with this information. and that I have helped you a bit further... looking forward to pictures of your project.

Hi Carleton,

Welcome to the big A, the best place to be:)

Sorry to kind of steal your topic but I wanted to ask you all if you know any good weathering techniques that can be used on balsa wood. And I mean some kind of mechanical or other treatment, so that balsa would look old, with lots of cracks. It should look natural, so I guess scribing with a knife isn't going to work. Maybe keep it in water and then put it in a freezer?? Would that create any cracks?? Wood usually dries out, and starts to crack when exposed to some harsh weather.

So if you know any methods of "oldening" wood I would be very grateful:)

Again, sorry Carleton for asking my question, but I didn't want to create a new topic, as my question has a lot in common with yours. I hope you don't get mad:)

cheers,
dsc.

Thanks faust for the info I will try it on sat and hopefully post some pics if they look half as good as yours I will be happy thanks again.Sorry dsc I dont know kinda learning myself hope someone answers for the both of us.Good question though I should have asked it as well thanks for doing so.

Faust's technique on weathering wood is a winner.. Only thing I would try is using different colours.. maybe a wash of burnt umber, sepia or raw sienna.. try those on some bits of balsa.. Maybe use differing amounts of paint, ie: more paint less thinner or vise versa.. See what the results are like then go to town on which ever you like best


Dave

PS.. Welcome to Armorama carleton

i follow the next steps to treat the wood...}

1.- rub the wood with ironbrush to make more realistic the texture
2.- paint all the wood with black permanent ink
3.- drybrush with diferent oil colors deppending the final color desired


on this way the wood had a shadow and light of the color i want as these:




redish, greenish colors of wood depending kind of wood

all the wood supports of rails is in balsawood treated on this way too.

i hope be helpfull

I found this product on the railroad aisle at the LHS. I works really well on wood. You simply apply the stuff to your wood and it stains the wood a weathered grey. The color can be controlled by how many times you apply the stain.

I used Weather-It on this pier.


Patrick

The board walk in hte photo below is balsa. I used a wash of Payne's grey oil paint overall and hit a few spots with extra amounts before dusting it up with pastels.

Wow guys thanks that is some great stuff and I really look forward to trying all the methods.I live here in alberta and am a heavy duty mechanic we are way to busy so hopefully in the next week I get to experiment .Thanks again for the info could not ask for a better response. shawn.

I've tried soaking balsa wood in water and freezing it but it didn't work. Normally wood tends to crack because water expands when freezing. I guess there was not enough water in that balsa.

I will have to stick to brushing balsa with a toothbrush. A similar idea was suggested by panzer67, but I think that using a wire brush (a different term was used by panzer67 - ironbrush, but I think he meant wire brush) can be too rough for balsa wood, as this kind of wood is usually quite delicate.

cheers,
dsc.