Is your wood broken? Well, sometimes it should be! And this enhancement is going to actually make your wood craftsman kit structure look awesome! The best part is, you can’t really screw it up. Just about anyone can do it, and you can get as creative with it as you want.
Hey, even very nice structures have natural and accidental damage to them at times. It is your model and you get to determine just how beat up you want it to be. Obviously with these tips below the more you do, the older and more beat it will appear, but with just some small subtle damage you can still have an attractive building that doesn’t look like a haunted mansion… unless you want that.
First, we have to remind ourselves before we decide to do this that it is damage after all and if you screw it up what is the worst thing that can happen? damage? You can literally make any screw up as well look like it was meant to look that way with a little ingenuity! However, breaking too much in one area or can look a little goofy, so you need to randomize it and spread it out semi-evenly over the model. If it is to look dilapidated then go crazy, it shouldn’t matter, but evenly do it across the whole building. If it is to just give it a few years of working service, then just do a board here or there. You get the picture.
The key is to focus on your spot of damage and then create something that will look super cool with a bit of attention to it. You accidentally split a board as you were working? Or you tried to lift a board and it breaks? Or worse (gasp!) the face of the clapboard falls off leaving an exposed half board? No panic, just make it look intentional to the viewer!
Some Things To Do Before You Begin
Before we can think about adding damage we have to prepare our walls or floor/decking.
Let’s think walls to start. Before adding any paint we like to put some real wood grain into the walls. How we do that can be found on fifty other videos on the internet.
But how we go about it is simply passing a stiff wire brush, or file card lightly over the wood a few times (3 or 4). The more you do the deeper the darker your grain is going to appear when painted and weathered.
So go light to start and do more if needed to suit you. Always go with the grain and direction of your clapboard horizontally. If you are doing board and batten walls, go vertically up and down.
when you have it like you want, either spray on your primer, we often use gray, or for some of you who prefer, stain it with your Alcohol India Ink wash and then put some weights, a heavy book or something on top of the walls to keep them from warping as it dries. We use hockey pucks…yep, seriously. When dry and weights are removed, DO NOT YET add your wall support bracing.
Rot, Mildew And Other Natural Nasty Stuff
Sure we could start right into battering and ripping into the boards, but what made it happen? Wouldn’t it be cool to give some of those spots a bit of wet rot? I learned this technique from the directions while doing a kit by FOS Scale Models, so credit them for the idea, however, it is so easy to do.
Start with some burnt or raw umber acrylic craft paint or oil paint and starting at the bottom of the wall near where the ground is, darken the wood with some upward brush strokes. We didn’t even thin it out much. Do it randomly, every few scale feet or so, and go up maybe 1/4 to 3/8 inch to as low as 1/8″ varying the height as you go with some non-effected wood in between to show gaps.
As you go up, taper it to a thinner point. The idea is at ground level you get different humidity and more moisture. This is especially cool on waterside structures.
You can also add some green colored mildew very easily to provide yet another dimension that treats the eyes. Using some oil color spring green or moss green just streak in some along those burnt and raw umber shades to show mildew or algae.
Then using the same brush, tone it down with some mineral spirits to take the bright edge off and let it fade into the dark brown by pushing the pigments of the paint into small areas. Think of it as nature would do it.
Google image search will turn up all sorts of examples. you can make it obvious but we prefer to just have hints that are faded in.
There are lots of things you can do that we haven’t even listed. Just get outside, drive around and check out nature!
There are paints available by AK Interactive, MiG Ammo, Valljero and others that produce these natural effects as well for military modeling and they work amazing. Light and Dark Green Slime, Moss deposits, and a host of other cool stuff. Not cheap but they last for a long time! Might be worth testing a few out.
We’re hooked.
Bring In The Wrecking Ball
Time to begin lifting some of your boards to produce that warped effect and show a few of them coming up at the studs. Nothing shows age to a model more than lifted boards (with the exception of peeling paint). Creating it can be mastered with practice on scrap clapboard. Most kits have some left over.
To Warp the boards we find it best to use a number 18 Xacto or similar hobby knife blade. you want to push gently under the clapboard bottom edge of the board you choose at a 35 to 45-degree angle, go in about 1/8th ” in or just short of the top of that slat board. and then very slowly and very gently pry it up by lowering the handle downward. You just want it to raise enough to look warped but not so much that it splits.
If you want the appearance of a board that has come off the stud/frame of the house, start with a straight razor blade, decide which direction you want the board to lift off then make a straight up and down incision into the wood marking the end of that board and perpendicular the direction of the slat.
From that point slide your razor in at the same angle we did earlier, but this time you will lift it until the board actually lifts at the end of the board you just created with that perpendicular cut. You are in a sense curling that bottom corner up but not so much you accidentally snap the board from the other end as well.
And so what if it does snap? It just adds more character! Remember, the boards don’t all get together and have a little meeting and decide to lift from the same side and direction! Change it up a bit and get some going the other way!
Missing boards are always pretty eye-catching if done correctly.
No one wants their building to have a clapboard or board and batten slat missing entirely on an occupied structure because let’s face it, There is no insulation or interior drywall in our models. A missing board is a huge black hole.
Fine for a barn or abandon structure, however. But you can make it look like the clapboard siding plank is completely missing and simulate the interior drywall by simply. When you are lifting boards you are not going completely through your wall, just under the surface in a sense slicing a top sliver. By completely removing that sliver you will have exposed under the board. And that is perfect.
Make sure to jack up one end or both of the remaining board by cutting it to look ragged where it snapped!
Making a Dangler!
You can also create a Dangler! have a board that came up dangle down at 90 degrees from the break. So it looks like it is hanging only on a single nail. A short one or two scale foot length looks great and it is rarely if ever seen in models!
All of this can be created on a loading dock of a warehouse, the decking of a pier or wharf in a shipping center, or anywhere flooring is shown. Punch a hole in it here and there.
Make the exposed wood look as if it was a break from some clumsy freight unloader.
You can create a hole and then patch a longer board over it with some nail holes, as if it was temporarily repaired. Or Don’t patch it at all!
Give Your Destruction Both Definition and Age.
Just punching a hole here and there, uplifting a board, or anything we mentioned above is not yet complete. Now your chosen chaos has the coloring of fresh lumber. You want to show off it’s exposure to the elements and make it look both natural and draw an eye.
So along those broken edges and exposed boards, darken it up with a healthy serving of your India Ink and Alcohol wash using a small thin paintbrush. You can further enhance it and add definition by adding a dusting of your weathering chalks in light browns. Maybe toss in a faint moss or mildew color!
Think Outside of Your Workshop!
Yes, getting outside and observing the structures and scenery around your town can teach you more than this or any how-to article or video in the hobby of modeling.
You simply have to open your eyes to the processes of nature and time. Look for the unique and what you rarely see modeled and give it a shot. Nothing that you find in this world is impossible to recreate on your model, diorama or layout. Look for the coloring, shading, elements and think about how it can be reproduced with any mediums or a combination of them that you possess or can purchase.
It is all out there for you. The product is there!
Start experimenting and exploring your techniques or create new ones with practice on scraps of anything. Don’t just build your kit and give it the perfect paint job and expect your friends, family and fellow modelers to say “wow!”
That might work for the first one they see. You have to provide the Wow! And it is easy to do. Research your world by viewing it.
