Steel cable transmission

[Lawton Maner]

     Good start!  Remember that there will be wear patterns in the wood as well as on metal parts.  The alcove off to the side of the stairs will have less use then the path from the top of the lower ladder to the bottom of the upper one.  The wood over in the corner of the alcove will show a bit heavier weathering then the foot path between the 2 ladders. 
      I have never used Silverwood, preferring to blend leather dye into a suitable witches' brew and thinning it with alcohol.  With patience one can come close to almost any wood color needed.  Unlike Silverwood, leather dye can be easily found in many parts.  If not available, then track down alcohol based wood dyes or as a last resort fall back on fabric dye which can be used in a pinch.

[Barney]

Looks good in fact excellent just like my fence in the back garden you could not of got a better match
Barney

[finescalerr]

SilverWood is available online from Builders-In-Scale: http://www.builders-in-scale.com/bis/parts-sup.html. I ordered a couple of bottles early this year because I know of no hobby store that carries it. Scroll down a little and you'll find it. I doubt it can produce a result any better than what you have achieved.

Please keep in mind that stains and the woods we use for modeling produce only generic results. If you want a specific grain pattern or weathering you'll have to get much more creative. I finally had to find online photos and printed them on art paper to create a specific weathered wood effect. Ray copied specific boards by painting styrene strips.

Russ

[Bill Gill]

Peter, Your wooden planks look good. On my screen the boards have a slight reddish color that I tried to make a more neutral gray (second photo) to more closely look like the decking I am familiar with in photos 3 & 4. Photo 3 shows a dock about 25-30 years old. A few boards still have a slight greenish hue. That is because they were pressure-treated for preservation which, at least in the U.S.A., usually creates a greenish surface when new, but the green slowly disappears over time. Photo 4 show another old dock where a few of the boards have been replaced at different times and are noticeably less weathered.

I have not seen greenish algae or moss on parts of decks or docks that get the most foot traffic like near the ladders in your photo

I have read and been told by a number of modelers that the coloring from SilverWood fades fairly quickly in normal light. Here are two links to staining and weathering wood that might give you more permanent results:
https://www.rustystumps.com/RSSMDownloads/Staining%20Stripwood.pdf
http://www.craftsmankituniversity.com/vanforum/index.php?p=/discussion/800/the-dr-grunge-advanced-wood-clinic

[Peter_T1958]

Bill, those links are great - thank you very much! I have found a bunch of inspiration there!

I came with the expectation that there wasn't excessive foot traffic as the installation helped to maintain the gearwheels and bearings. But, there must be some signs of more or less use and/or weathering on some boards. What especially caught my eye are those  less weathered replacement boards - cool!

Here a reference picture of what I wanted to archieve.

I have not seen greenish algae or moss on parts of decks or docks that get the most foot traffic like near the ladders in your photo

When googling I found only very few pictures of boards with a geenish hue. And all of them only in areas covered with vegetation - so this sounds plausible. A quick visit at the former site was only partly informative. While all stone foundations look almost complete green; the boards on the stairs are very dark and moistly, but here again: very few green. 

[Hydrostat]

I came with the expectation that there wasn't excessive foot traffic as the installation helped to maintain the gearwheels and bearings. But, there must be some signs of more or less use and/or weathering on some boards.

Peter,

all the bearings seem to have been friction bearings at that time and it seems that the open gear wheels didn't run in an oil or grease pan (a heavy rain would have emptied an open oil pan quickly). This required daily or at least frequent maintenance, if I'm not completely wrong. So there may have been some traffic on the boards. Looking at the old pictures there's a lot of oil stains running down from the lubrication points. Maybe some oil dropped to the boards from the oil cans, too.

Cheers,
Volker

[finescalerr]

Impressive research and logic, Volker. -- Russ

[Peter_T1958]

I don't quite know in what direction I should move on. After two previous attempts here ...


I wanted to try out Lawton's proposal:

I have never used Silverwood, preferring to blend leather dye into a suitable witches' brew and thinning it with alcohol.  With patience one can come close to almost any wood color needed.

Here the first promising result. Note, there is no weathering done up to now!


All inputs are very welcome!

[Hauk]

      I have never used Silverwood, preferring to blend leather dye into a suitable witches' brew and thinning it with alcohol.

That's exactly what SilverWood is!

[Peter_T1958]

Hi all

What I really love about my modelling subject is the fact, that I can switch arbitrarily between modelling techniques. Sometimes it's soldering brass parts, then working with wood and at other times ... I am casting stone imitations.
The side wall was built up from limestone. This sort of wall you can find in my hometown at almost every corner. The major challenge is to imitate the roughly applyed plaster in the gaps.
Here an in progress photo montage (the progress is to be seen from right to left). Next step will be the weathering - something I like a lot!!!

[Ray Dunakin]

Looking good.

[finescalerr]

So you use pre-stained plaster to represent limestone? That wall looks quite good already. -- Russ

[Lawton Maner]

     Back about 50+ years ago there was an article in Model Railroader on blending black and brown leather dye to reproduce almost any wood color from new creosoted ties to pine boards which had been in the weather for a very short time.  At the time I made up a sample board using basswood sheet stock to create the samples.  I went a bit further then the article and experimented with creating a spread of colors to represent penta treated green boards for power poles, fences, and backyard decks. 
     In college I discovered the furniture industry's technique for using a base tint to give a uniform color prior to adding the weathering color and have used a variety of yellow and orange base colors to give a closer representation of pine or red oak as well as other species of wood.  The modern water based deck wood treatment must have a base tine because there is so little color to the chemicals that the color of the pine is quite noticeable.
     My colors come from Tandy Leather.  I think the quart of black I have is over 15 years old and still going strong.  Fortunately there is a retail store around the corner from the lumber yard where most of the cabinet lumber I use comes from.I recently finished an ash ladder headboard bed frame for a client which was dyed with Cordovan shoe dye.  My wife has an alder jewelry box which I ebonized with the black dye back in our college days.   

[Bill Gill]

Peter, your limestone wall with rough plaster is looking good.
I did something similar for HO scale bridge abutments. The prototype abutments were dry laid granite. They had problems with subsidence and were repaired with mortar.
The model granite is carved styrene. The mortar is Sculptamold with a bit of water, yellow wood glue and paint tinting colors.
(You can click on the photos to enlarge them).

[Peter_T1958]

Thanks for your thoughts

@Russ
Yes, I used plaster, stained with pigments to get some different hues. At this stage, you can make out pronounced colour differences. Weathering will help to harmonise the colours.
@ Bill
Hard to believe that your granite is carved styrene...  very impressive (and in that scale!!!)


The stonewall leaves much room for interpretation; only one enlargement and a enlargend detail view of a 1870's city map can be used as a basis.