A snapshot in time. A glimpse of the Plettenberger Kleinbahn in 1/22.5 scale.

[Barney]

Just Lovely nice work
Barney

[Hydrostat]

Thanks Russ, Bernhard, Ray, Les and Barney.

Disturbingly superb. it should be illegal to be that talented. -- Russ

It should be illegal to quit publishing that outstanding magazines.

Do you miniaturise yourself to be able to get such fantastic detail at that scale?
Les

No. I am that small  . Just some CAD work according to Shapeways' specifications. The difficult part was to solder the parts and still have them motile at areas being very close to each other. A special anti flux paste and/or an edding (which has an anti flux effect, too) helped to do that. Drilling the holes for the splints (rounded 0.3 mm wire) was the hardest part. For I'm not able to drill the steel rods, I soldered the splints in place (they stuck very tight in the bore holes), then rebored the holes for the shafts and finally soldered the shafts with additional roller bushings in place. I'm going to use glass fiber rods for the connection with the switch blades.

Cheers,
Volker

[Bernhard]

Can you tell us what the Anti Flux agent exactly is? I've been looking for something like this for a long time. So far I always help myself with a Eding too.

Bernhard

[fspg2]

Have a look here
and more here

[Hydrostat]

Can you tell us what the Anti Flux agent exactly is? I've been looking for something like this for a long time. So far I always help myself with a Eding too.

Bernhard

It's 'Contex' by Degussa.

[Bernhard]

Thanks Frithjof and Volker. I will try this.

Bernhard

[Hydrostat]

Meanwhile the burnished bridge got it's final coloring and a first subtle wheathering. Thanks a lot to my friend Toni, who provided a spray booth with LEV in the needed size - and his encouragement for my very first large airbrush project. Hard to believe it's been six years since I made the stretch of track for the bridge. I'm very happy both parts finally got together.























Cheers,
Volker

[finescalerr]

Satisfactory. -- Russ

[Ray Dunakin]

Awesome! Really nice work. I love the chipped/corroded paint. How did you get that effect?

[nk]

That is just great work Volker. The corrosion, chipped paint and efflorescence is just amazing. Well done.

[Hydrostat]

Ray, Narayan,

my intend was to have the orange color appearing, which was so typical for iron structures at least in Germany for decades, called 'Bleimennige' (red lead?), a lead based anticorrosive primer. I recall lots of iron structures showing this color at some spots with deep seated rust and color layers peeling away. Nowadays the poisonous lead color is forbidden and you rather see a brownish/rusty or grey colored primer on iron structures.

First 'layer' was the burnishing of the bridge itself; it had a perfect color to represent old rust and gives a good undercoat for coloring.




Next step was applying some salt at the spots representing rust later on and fixing it with water, and a layer of orange acrylics. The salt needs to be sticky to the surface and completetly dry before airbrushing it:







Adding more salt with different grids at the same spots. Second color layer is a grey primer.







I didn't take pictures of the next steps, but basically it was adding some more salt before applying the final grey color. Multiple layers of color add to the effect, always spreading some more salt.

Wheathering is airbrushed water color, applied in dozens of layers. It's fun to work that way because one can remove it easily with clear water airbrushed on with some pressure. It's like using a pressure washer. I first airbrushed the inner areas and so the sides still show the plain grey coloring. The water color sticks tight enough to handle the bridge carefully, but there's a lacquer to come, when wheathering is finished if the bridge is finally placed. This may be in ten years or so .










This is my friend Toni's spray booth, barely big enough for the whole bridge, but it worked.



Cheers,
Volker

[finescalerr]

An excellent tutorial. Thank you. -- Russ

[Bernhard]

Thank you for this tutorial. I would never have thought of using watercolour in the airbrush gun for weathering. But this works really well.

Bernhard

[Ray Dunakin]

Thanks for the tutorial -- very helpful! Someday I need to get my old airbrush equipment working again. I can't get such subtle effects using painted sprayed from aerosol cans.

[Bill Gill]

Very good weathering. Thanks for the tutorial.