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Adding Paint to Testors Dullcoat

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Adding Paint to Testors Dullcoat
Posted by Sandcounty on Thursday, August 9, 2018 1:28 PM

I want to add paint to Dullcoat to produce an aging effect for boxcars. I know that Flouqil in Dullcoat has been used to do this. What current hobby paints are compatable? The paint would be 10% of the mix with 45% Dullcoat and 45% thinner(lacquer thinner).

Anthony

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Posted by maxman on Thursday, August 9, 2018 1:51 PM

What will be the other 10%?

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Posted by Sandcounty on Thursday, August 9, 2018 1:55 PM

The mix would be 45% Dullcoat, 45% Lacquer thinner and 10% paint.

Anthony

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Posted by stokesda on Thursday, August 9, 2018 2:10 PM

If Floquil worked in the past, any oil-based Testors paint should also work. Either the Model Master (non-acrylic), or their old school basic paints in the little square glass jars.

Dan Stokes

My other car is a tunnel motor

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Posted by 7j43k on Thursday, August 9, 2018 2:54 PM

Floquil is/was a lacquer.  Dull Coat is a lacquer.  Testors paint is an enamel.  Model Master has a line of lacquer, for car models.

I recommend doing an experiment before spraying the mix on something special.  Just to make sure it works.

 

Ed

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Posted by BigDaddy on Thursday, August 9, 2018 3:02 PM

Anthony, what is the advantage of mixing the two, saving a step using Dullcote at the end?

I use multiple colors to weather, a dilute gray to knock down the overall color and give it a faded color, dirt or dust around the ends and wheels and some grimy black on the roof (transition era)  

Henry

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Posted by Sandcounty on Thursday, August 9, 2018 3:14 PM

I was following a method presented in MRH Magazine. The author used the paint in Dullcoat method. Will airbrushing a diluted paint on first and then Dullcoat result in the same end product? I will try the paint first and Dullcoat last approach.

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Posted by 7j43k on Thursday, August 9, 2018 4:34 PM

Yup, it'll work.  When I use the Testors enamel, I wait a week or so for it to set up before applying Dull Coat.

In addition, if you were to go this newfangled route, you'd be adding Dull Coat every time you sprayed another color.  Why?  You only need it once, at the end.

 

Ed

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Posted by Deane Johnson on Thursday, August 9, 2018 5:27 PM

7j43k

Yup, it'll work.  When I use the Testors enamel, I wait a week or so for it to set up before applying Dull Coat.

In addition, if you were to go this newfangled route, you'd be adding Dull Coat every time you sprayed another color.  Why?  You only need it once, at the end.

 

Ed

 

7j43k

Yup, it'll work.  When I use the Testors enamel, I wait a week or so for it to set up before applying Dull Coat.

In addition, if you were to go this newfangled route, you'd be adding Dull Coat every time you sprayed another color.  Why?  You only need it once, at the end.

 

Ed

 

I know nothing of this procedure, but my guess is that the addition of 10% paint in the mix is to give a slightly faded or weathered look to surface.  I would think the effect would be that the lettering would look like the underneath surface was beginning to show through the letters.  Just guessing.

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Posted by Deane Johnson on Thursday, August 9, 2018 5:28 PM

Duplicate.  Sorry.  I guess one needs to be smarter than the software.

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Posted by doctorwayne on Thursday, August 9, 2018 10:00 PM

Deane Johnson
....I know nothing of this procedure, but my guess is that the addition of 10% paint in the mix is to give a slightly faded or weathered look to surface....

I feel like I'm pretty-much in the same boat, Deane.

If the OP simply wants to cut the contrast of fresh lettering on a freshly painted car, the first step should be to apply the Dullcoat.  That takes the car from a just-painted-and-lettered-car to a car that's lost its sheen.
To cut the starkness of fresh lettering on fairly new paint, take some of either the original paint used, or a colour similar to the original, thin it severely (at least 90% thinner) and then airbrush-apply it to the entire car.

I almost never take photographs of just-lettered cars, but did find one that is mostly lettered (I omitted part of the weights, as is done with real cars, as the values can't be filled-in until the car is weighed)...

I don't have a picture of any of the eight-such cars built that shows only the overspray of the severely-thinned original colour, but this one has had it applied, plus some light weathering...

The subdued lettering is attributable more to the overspray of the thinned car colour than it is to the light weathering.
Here's another car from the same lot, with heavier weathering...

Mixing paint (usually already flat) with Dullcote wastes both commodities, and your time, too.  The main purpose of Dullcote is to make the lettering (decals, dry transfers, or painted-on) appear as an integral part of the car's finish, and is, in some ways, also the first step in weathering, as real railroad cars are generally glossy when new.
To make the car appear just a little bit weathered, the well-thinned paint does a pretty good job, along with, perhaps, a bit of road dust on the trucks, underbody and the lower part of the car's sides. 
For aging beyond that, the sky's the limit, I guess, but I wouldn't add Dullcote over the weathering unless you use oil paints or chalk for weathering. 
Airbrushed weathering, washes, dry-brushing, and pastels  stand-up well to handling and applying Dullcote over them, in my opinion, makes the effect too uniform, which isn't, in most cases, true of the real ones.

I'll try to remember, during my next painting session, to take a series of photos from painted, to Glosscoted, to lettered, to Glosscoted again, to Dullcoted, then with the well-thinned overspray, and any subsequent weathering steps.

This Accurail automobile car was lettered with C-D-S dry transfers, which are very opaque - much more so than most decals.  The car represents an almost new one on my late '30s layout, and it's been Dullcoted and had the thinned-paint overspray, with very little additional weathering.  The contrast between the car and its lettering isn't stark, as on a brand new car, but it's not yet really even dirty....

Wayne

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Posted by Deane Johnson on Friday, August 10, 2018 7:34 AM

Very nice results Wayne.  Your comparison photos really tell the story.

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Posted by NVSRR on Friday, August 10, 2018 8:47 AM

That works better than spraying a light color over the model.   For fading.  Bet it would work with acrylic dull oat and acrylic paints

 

 

the only time i added dullcoat to paint is to save the floquil from drying out   It works great to save the old floquil paints

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Posted by doctorwayne on Friday, August 10, 2018 1:25 PM

NVSRR
That works better than spraying a light color over the model. For fading. Bet it would work with acrylic dull oat and acrylic paints...

Most, although not all, of the photos shown, are of cars painted with Pollyscale paints.  The flat and gloss finishes, however, were all done using Testors Glosscote and Dullcote, thinned with lacquer thinner and applied with an airbrush. 

Old Floquil paint, if it hasn't yet reached the "gel" stage, can be helped by the addition of ordinary lacquer thinner.  In all the years which I used Floquil, that's the only thinner I used, and for airbrushing it, too. 
I still have about 20 bottles of Floquil remaining, some not yet opened.  One of the opened ones is Pullman Green in the old-style square bottle - no longer suitable for airbrushing, but very useable for brush-painting the wheel faces on freight cars.

Wayne

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Posted by SeeYou190 on Saturday, August 11, 2018 9:49 PM

I have tried this mixing two bottles of the same color, one with about 10% white mixed in the get the lighter effect.

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It does not work well. Black and white underpriming like military modelers do works better for me.

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This car was black and white underprimed to make the panels lighter than the ribs. The whole car was painted with the same color. You probably need to click the image for a larger view to see the effect. It is subtle and effective.

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-Kevin

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Living the dream.

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Posted by doctorwayne on Saturday, August 11, 2018 10:45 PM

The effect is easily visible in the enlarged photo, but if you'd not mentioned your method of priming, I would have assumed that not enough of the finish paint had reached the base of the ribs where they meet the face of the panels, leaving the darker shade as perhaps some of the carbody's original colour showing through.

The effect works, though, because panel joints are often the first place where weathering effects, especially darker ones, begin to accumulate.

Wayne

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