Wood & Other Naturally Porous Materials
I suggest to begin by shaking this product very well. The method that I use to apply the Doctor Ben's Natural Pine to wood is to first lay my wood out flat and spread out the Doctor Ben's Natural Pine on first one side of the wood and then the other side with a general purpose brush. I let each side sit for a minute or so & then I wipe the excess off with an old tee-shirt material (the big home improvement centers sell this material by the bags) and then do the same to the other side. You will find that by following this process, the wood will warp less and the sealed wood will resist warping from humidity & the environment. In the event that this product becomes thicker that you prefer, just add a little rubbing alcohol - just a little at a time - until the product viscosity is at your liking.
Once you have primed your wood--as per George Sellios' instructions in his Fine Scale Miniatures kit instructions (this is where I learned this technique back in the 1970s)--then you are ready to apply your colors. If you would like to take the FSM instructions a bit further, follow up as I have provided above, finish your colors, and now using a razor knife, gouge into the wood, scratch it up, slide the blade under the clapboards, and so on. Now, using a tee-shirt material with your finger poking into the material, dabbing your cloth covered finger into this product and scrub it into the gouges and scratches that you've made into your wood surface. You will be very impress after the results and how the Doctor Ben's Natural Pine dries. You now have a very realistically weathered material in a very controlled process that you can very easily replicate over and over again so you should have no more fears of weathering wood!.
Plastic & Other non-Porous Materials
Once again, I suggest to begin by shaking this product very well. You will find that you may not need to shake as much as you initially shook this product, it just depends upon whether you like to work with thick vs. thin. Either way, when using the Doctor Ben's Natural Pine on non-porous material such as plastic, metal and others, I try to use a better quality water color brush so that I do not have as many streaks. In that i prefer to work with thin and build up layers, I will alternate coats first across, then up/down, across until I have the coverage that I am looking for. Just realize that darker colors require more thin coats than lighter colors require.
Also, just in case that you are wondering what surface preparation that I set up with, most of the "toy" cars that I begin with typically have a gloss paint and using the Doctor Ben's Natural Pine to prime the surface of a shiny plastic or metal paint job results two-fold. First the rubbing alcohol neutralizes minor oil including finger prints and so I do not have to worry about the finished surface peeling back off. Secondly, the Doctor Ben's Natural Pine results in a flat surface which is ideal for top coating with another color, dry transfer decals, and/or weathering.
Be Individual
Finally, I have a couple of more tips for you to try. You may have read or heard them somewhere else, but in all honestly, these ideas started here. You may have a drawer full of various paints in a plethora of colors that most likely with not mix, right? What if you had just a few paints and you could mix your own original colors? Wouldn't it be great to not have the colors of you structures, vehicles, and details look like you buddies' colors? Think about it, the prototype railroad did not use a certain color and stick with it to make sure that every single boxcar was the same color as a reefer as a caboose, as, well, you understand where I'm going with this right?
I have been using the Floquil Flo-Stain Driftwood ever since George Sellios got me hooked on it thirty years ago. And although I have never counted all the FSM kits that I have constructed for folks as well as all the scratch-built structures that I've constructed, I suspect that this would have resulted in literally gallons of the Floquil Flo-Stain Driftwood product. However, being the thrifty modeler that I am, a very long time ago, I began creating the Doctor Ben's
Natural Pine that we offer to you today. We make the Doctor Ben's Natural Pine the very same way that I made it for my own use 20 years ago and no one has ever been the wiser. I have found out that by just combining a spoonful of the Doctor Ben's Natural Pine with a dab of artists acrylics that I can use a color chart to create nearly any color that I need to replicate. I will state up front that this is a gutsy move and I have mastered the process, but you will find that you no longer need all those caustic paints and thinners--your body will thank you for it!
Up is Down and Down is UP
After you have completed all this painting & detailing, try turning the structure, car, detail that you are working on upside down and apply the Doctor Ben's Instant Age to allow gravity to pull the residue to what would be the bottoms of any protrusions. Now stop and try to picture this in your head and try to think small in scale. For instance, think about clapboards. A typical clapboard slopes out just a few scale inches and if you were to apply a weathering solution onto the clapboards right side up, gravity would just pull the weathering solution out to the pointy section of the clapboard. Now the lower surface of the clapboard looks dirty and the tapered surface sloping up under the clapboard above it is lighter. That doesn't look right, now does it?
By turning you model upside down and then weathering it so that the solutions run down into what are actually the crevasses at the bottom of the clapboards, when you turn it right side up, the effect looks just like real life shadows & residues! But don't take my word for it, you have to try it. This is now a published technique and protected, so if you do try this we would appreciate your references to this article.
So, begin with light coats & allow to dry and build up until the desired results are satisfactory as opposed to globing it on and having to take some of it back off.. Should you feel that you've applied too much product, re-wet with this product (or a little rubbing alcohol) and wipe off with a clean, dry cloth.
We also recommend that you try applying the Doctor Ben's Realistic Rust on top of the Doctor Ben's Instant Age and vise versa. As with all of our products, for the ultimate realism, apply our product and then turn the object upside down to allow gravity to pull the residue to any protrusions. This way when you turn it right side up, the effect looks just like real life. Read back here for further instructions. Good Luck!
