In this case, a P-61. I like my warbirds pretty beat-up, so can anyone give me some tips for my Blackwidow? Never weathered a black aircraft before.

Hi Alex -

I'm not sure how you could do it but is this what your lookng for?

..or maybe this one

I've heard of various ways of doing this,all starting with the same premise. Don't paint the black black to start with as this makes weathering very difficult. I am no expert but I have done this once using Lampie's red/black mix and it looked okay to me. Obviously you can darken and lighten it to suit. Others swear by dark greys and NATO black (which I think is a very,very dark green).Sorry I've never tried either.I'm sure there are some experts out there who have!
Cheers
Steve

Hi Alex


Paintchipping could be done by first painting your p-61 aluminium allover , letting it dry, then slightly wetting parts of the surface with a bit of water (or saliva works better), and then sprinkling some saltcrystals on it. Let it dry, (the crystals will attach to the surface without dissolving) and then spray black paint allover your model (but don't put your compressor on max or you'll blow everything off...) . After all has dried, you can gently rub off the saltcrystals, which will leave a nice weathered look showing bare aluminium through the black. (a bit like japanese ww2 aircraft, and it looks like the first pick steve posted).
If the colourdifference is too agressive, you can slighty mist black allover again, which will bond the two colours more.
Panellines details can be brought forward by using a grey wash (instead of using black washes like for normal aircraft.)
You could also stain your model with little grey and or white dots of waterbased paint, and then rubbing them off, and repeating this allover again until your model has nice streaks on it. I don't know exactly how this work, but on the shipwright forum there are very nice examples of subs being weathered this way, which I'm sure will also work nicely on your Blackwiddow.

Good luck, and keep us informed.
brgds

Excellent! Thanks for the replies and yes, those photos are the sort of thing I'm after. Sadly the Widow was sprayed black yesterday, but I'm sure I'll still be able to create something neat.

Stay tuned.