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Black Gold Washes - Oil Washes That Is

When the wash has had sufficient time to dry, the excess needs to be wiped off. Any cloth will do but it’s best to use one that won’t leave to many fibres behind, I use an old handkerchief. I would suggest that you first of all “test the wash” by wiping with a dry cloth. The ideal situation is that the wash has dried enough to leave pigment in the panel lines, but not so much that the excess doesn’t want to be wiped off. There is a quite small window of opportunity for this to occur, of course each time you apply a wash this window of opportunity, will be different. Because of this I have stopped worrying about it, if it happens, great, but generally it won’t. This test will also determine if the wash is still to wet, if it is you will wipe it out of the panel lines as well as removing the excess.

If this happens simply re-apply the wash and leave for longer. As stated earlier this wash was left on for 2 hours, the window of opportunity had been missed. In fact I had other things to do, which is another reason for not worrying about this. So now we need to add just a hint of thinner, white spirit in this case, to the cloth. Don’t soak it, you just need the merest dab. Then wipe off the excess, in the direction of the airflow. (8) You may still wipe some of the wash out of the panel lines, don’t worry, finish wiping off the excess, then reapply the wash to any areas that require it, leave, then wipe off later. I think you will agree that the final affect is reasonably subtle, but adds to the overall appearance, the difference between the washed and unwashed halves is clear (9) (of course you would complete the whole of the underside, I’ve done one half to highlight the difference). I think you will agree, black would just look wrong?

I tackle the uppersurface next, For this I use a darker colour, in this instance Raw Umber. In this picture I have tested the Davy Grey, used on the undersurface, on the upper wing, it looks very light. If I had used the Raw Umber on the undersurface it would be, almost as bad as using black (10). This is why I use different colours, top and bottom, unless of course the aircraft is one colour overall. I mixed the Raw Umber wash the same as before. You can see, from the wash applied to the card how the strength can, easily, be controlled. The final strength was between 2 and 3, but at first I was using it as strength 2. I wasn’t happy with it, so I increased the strength, this was then to strong, so I cut it back, a little (11).

The uppersurface wash is applied exactly as before. (12) (13) (14). I came to wipe off the excess, again after 2 hours, but it needed longer (this was probably due to this being normal oil paint which takes longer to dry). Because I had wiped some of the wash out of some of the panel lines, I simply re-applied it. (Don’t throw your wash away until you are done). I reckoned that I needed to wait at least 5 hours, but as it was about 9.00pm I simply left it until the following morning. (I have left washes over 24 hours), but washes left this long will be all but dry. This means that when you wipe off the excess you need more thinner on your cloth, but this then takes away one of the advantages of an oil wash. It doesn’t leave that slight smear. If you don’t want that smear, you now know what to do.

Of course to be convincing the wash needs to be applied over the decals. Even with careful application of the decals, though, the wash won’t always behave. The decals will make the panel lines shallower and therefore you may wipe the wash out of them, in places. This happened here, as it usually does, I simply added more wash (which is now thicker, because some of the thinner has evaporated) leave it a while and wipe it off, but go gently. When you are happy with the wash leave it to dry completely, a couple of days should do it, then on to the next stage, further weathering, the next article in line.

I hope you agree that the overall affect is better by applying the decals before the wash, so that they can get the same treatment. If they were applied after they would stand out and wouldn’t look as if they belonged to the aircraft.

When doing this it is very easy to forget the bits that you will add at the final assembly stage, undercarriage doors, antenna and the elevators, which were separated. These bits may look at odds to the rest of the model, if not treated the same, at the same time.

The next page contains images of the upper surfaces after the wash was applied and then excess removed.