Sierra West Quincy Salvage

[SteveCuster]

Thanks Donato and Eric.

I'm working on painting all the castings for both kits. Several hundred of them.

-Steve

[jimmillho]

Simply Amazing.
Eric Quebec city

I'll second that

Jim

[SteveCuster]

Thanks Jim

[Slim Jerkins]

Just catching up here. Nice job Steve!


My feelings aren't hurt if people buy pre-wired Chinese LEDs. It's a fact of life anymore and there's no competing on that front. I think my lighting clinics are a little easier to understand than theirs though.


-slim

[SteveCuster]

Thanks Slim. I bought one of your lighting starter kits at the 2014 Expo and I use different things from it all the time. I've used several of the bigger LEDs to light the interior of some models, I just don't have the patience to wire these really tiny ones up. At least not when they are so cheap from China.

A little update today, I started moving along with all the castings.


I sorted all the castings into different basecoats. I like to use Rust-Oleum Camouflage Sand for castings representing wood, Camo Black for any resin castings representing metal and I use JAX Pewter Black to patina any castings representing metal that are white metal. Several hundred castings here, Brett's kits always have a ton of the highest quality castings and since I'm combining 2 kits for this diorama I have twice as much.


I put all barrels and drums on toothpicks. I just drilled a small hole with a dremel, I didn't glue the toothpicks in, the taper held them in place good enough for me.


Here is an overall shot after priming everything. It took me quite a few hours to get to this point. I let everything dry overnight.


I'm still getting the hang of photographing the smaller detail parts clearly. This drum was painted with Boxcar Red and Bone from the SW paintset. They are Reaper Miniatures paints. After a few coats of paint I dipped the casting in alcohol and smacked it with a wire brush, Brett has a video describing this technique on his website.
I then dusted the casting with chalk.


This casting was weathered the same way only I used Meadow Green instead of Boxcar Red.


This tank was weathered the same way.


This barrel was weathered with A&I and dusted with chalk. The band was painted with Burnt Umber craft paint. I used SW Grimy Black for the gears followed by a drybrushing of SW Tarnished Steel. In the past I painted details representing metal with Old Silver or similar paint, I was never real happy with the results, I found painted them gray or black and drybrushing silver on the edges makes them look much more realistic to me. The bottle is SW Meadow Green.

I'm learning a bit about weathering and painting castings, I'm also getting some good practice. The SW website has a few really good tutorials from Kevin O'Neill and Karl Allison describing the techniques I've been using. I've built kits from most manufacturers and nobody beats Brett when it comes to quantity and quality of castings.
Hopefully by the time I'm done all these castings my skills will improve a bit.

Thanks for checking in.

-Steve

[donatode]

Nice tutorial on the detail parts painting. I may (since I'm a bit dense these days) have learned a thing or two.

[SteveCuster]

I knocked out most of the casting painting over the last 2 weeks. These kits come with some of the finest castings I've ever seen. The detail is incredible. Lots of castings too. All castings were painted using the SW paint set from Reaper. The kit is for sale on Brett's website.


Here is the different piles of finished castings. Lots of cool details here. I took a few close up shots of some of my favorite castings.


This tall water tank is one of my favorites. The wood grain detail in the casting is unbelievable. The casting is resin, I primed it with khaki spray paint. I added a wash of A&I, painted the bands with SW Roof Brown and the metal paint was done with SW Grimy Black. I dusted everything with brown colored chalks of various colors.

The scale face was done by downloading a picture of a scale from the internet, making it super small and cutting it out.

This is the picture I used.


I plan to have this one sitting outside so I added extra grime on the bottom. I figured a wooden cabinet outdoors in a salvage yard would be pretty grimy.




I have a few mini scenes to finish then I'll be starting to scenic the diorama. Hopefully make some more progress this weekend.
Thanks for checking in.
-Steve

[Janbouli]

Beautiful job on the castings Steve. For a moment I thought the bench scale was also a casting and couldn't believe the detail 

[SteveCuster]

Thanks Jan.

[bparrish]

Steve...

Hey that's my trick ! ! !

Stealing stuff off of the internet and making them really little.  That is how I made the gauge dial for the Falk loco.

That is great detail stuff.

thanx
Bob