ST-1JR Build - May the Force be with???

[Andy40]

What about redneck rampage's guitar...also great paintwork

[wokkaboy]

cool project Fred I missed this. Keep doing what you are doing sure you will make the R2D2 pieces work. Just make sure there are no sharp edges your son may cut himself on

[FredA]

Cheers wokka. Don't worry, i've grinded the edges off and I'm planning to recess the plates by 1mm or so, so no sharp edges!
We take OH&S seriously here! :-)

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[UpperCaseH]

What a great project! Can't wait to see how the recessed pieces work. Are you planning to seal them in or finish over them or anything?

[FredA]

I want to seal them to hide the edges of the steel plates as my cuts aren't very straight.
So I'm thinking i'm going to do all wood working, then paint solid white.
Then i want to try to glue the pieces in the recesses and seal the edges with the gap sealer used in construction. I should then be able to paint white to match colours, and then finish the guitar with gloss acrylic.

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[FredA]

I've done a bit of a test today. I recessed a spare plate by about 1-2mm, glued it with a big lump of gap filler so a fair vit came out all around. I wiped this flat-ish, and then painted the surrounds white to simulate how the guitar will look.


Once dried I painted on top with black paint and wiped it out so to leave paint only in ridges. A bit too dark, but might be good if i water down the paint a bit:





Are any of you guys experienced at aging things with paint?
Cheers

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[UpperCaseH]

I'm OK with ageing/weathering scale models, but I'm talking generally 1/72 scale or below (so... 3 inch long tanks) and most of the techniques I used don't scale up very well. I also worked mostly with acrylics, so things would be a bit different. You'd probably want artist type brushes for something this size. Cheap ones will be fine.

One thing to try that's similar to what you've already done and have in mind is a black wash. It's kinda of mis-named. Make some really really thin black paint. Thin like milk. Take a small brush and load it up then paint it about half out on paper. Run that brush down the low points of details - in the valleys, lines, etc. To scale this up, every few cm pull it up the sides of the valley or line slightly, but not right to the ridges. You should end up with a small amount of black paint in the low points, and it should dry in a way that makes it look like it's faded down from a light tint near the top to a darkish tint at the bottom. You'll need to experiment to get it right. If you were doing the original bucket on its own, you'd be trying to outline the raised bits like this - that is, the paint should cling on to the sides of the raised parts. The idea is to make details pop, but if you're heavy handed you get a pretty good old/dirty effect.

I don't think it'll scale up great, but you can do rust the same way by using a red/brown tint in the black. The wash is so very thin that you need quite a dark colour for it to show up.

Second thing you can try is highlighting the ridges/edges by dry brushing. Get an old brush that you don't want any more. A "dead" brush is fine or even preferable because you're going to ruin it for doing anything else. To make an edge look dirty, you want to use the same colour as the base, but lightened. Mix the color, dip the very tip of the brush, then paint it out on paper until you think the colour's gone. Then very very lightly barely dust the brush back and forward perpendicular to the edge. The edge will eventually lighten and kind of pop. If you press a bit harder and/or use a bit more paint (experimentation), you'll get very small streaks up and down away from the edge, which will create a dirty/old effect.

You can also use dry brushing to make it look like an edge is worn. You want to go very lightly for this and basically just highlight the very edge. If you use a silvery colour, it'll look like bare metal is showing through under the paint. If you use red/brown, you can get a basic effect of rust showing through.

Generally, you would wash first, then drybrush highlights, then drybrush wear, and you would have a basic weathered/aged look. I have no idea how this will scale up to the details you're working on, although I suspect an over thinned black wash applied evenly to the whole surface and allowed to gather in the valleys would go a long way to being a start. On your test piece there, I'd get a very very thin wash over the whole of the center recessed part of the plate, and then go over it again with a regular thin wash to get it to cling round the bottom edges. Then dry brush a light grey or darkened silver metallic to highlight both edges of the rim and maybe streak the inner edge a tiny tiny bit toward the wash. It should end up with the high parts white, the edges ofthe high parts "worn" silver/grey, the recessed part a dirty colour, and the edges/corners of the recessed part dark. (Edit: a wash doesn't work great on a porous surface, I don't know how you'll deal with that over wood).

Whatever you do, it's gonna look better if you keep all the streaks, scratches, runs, smears, etc going in roughly the same direction.

There's also this technique which I never got the hang of and won't try to explain: http://www.scalemodelguide.com/paint...t-chips-salt/# Every time I tried, it looked like the "gone wrong" picture.

[FredA]

Thanks heaps for all these details!

I've used black wash and dry brushing before on models. But I was 16 then and I forgot about these... I'll try that to see how I go.
I am also trying to find how to age the painted part of the guitar as it is going to be flat... there's loads of resources online. Just hard to find the right one sometimes!

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[Dedman]

if you use a clear flat coat and press in some course cloth before its dry it will leave a "tooth" behind that will grab your dry brushing or washes.

[FredA]

Cheers Dedman. I'll look into that!

In the meantime I've started going through the standard build process. I've set up the bridge and bolted the neck:





I wasn't going to add any upgrade to this one considering it's got seriously high chances of being used as a toy more than an instrument, but the nut's got to go.
It's chipped on the low E side and the slot for the high e is barely there:


Anyway. Now I can start the wood working. The 'future owner's approved a design for the headstock:

Just have to cut it now.

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