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Phillip, I find the process to be pretty forgiving, so I don't have a set ratio. I use a combination of black and brown shoe dye mostly black (10 to 1 ratio btwn black and brown). I find that the alcohol lasts forever but that I have to add the shoedye almost every time I do a larger project. Start with a good sized glass jar, fill maybe 1/2 full of rubbing alcohol and put enough shoedye in it to turn it jet black when shaken. Try a piece of wood...let it soak maybe 5 min. and pull it out (I sacrificed a fork for this, the mixture will stain your fingers) and let it dry on aluminum foil. You can adjust the darkness by the amount of time the wood stays in the mix. You are using scale wood, right? It doesn't work too well on plywood or the laser cut wood stuff. There are lots of methods to weather wood. All the train guys I know have a "Jar". An easy project to see how this will work is to buy some scale 1x4's and put a wood deck on a flat car. Cut all the pieces, stain em' and glue em' right over the existing deck using Aileen's tacky glue. Looks great, easy to do and you will be hooked.... I know there are people out there who prefer painted styrene to wood but in my experience the plastic doesn't have the depth that real wood has, besides I love the look. BTW: Don't ever drop the jar. The mess will land you in the doghouse for years. I broke one in the garage, I can still see the spot years later.
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