O Scale Dock Hoist Kit

Wood Parts

My ‘normal’ (as much as that word can be used for me) method for wood is to use Silverwood to gray the wood .. perhaps adding weathered/chipped paint on top using the hairspray technique. I am going to try something different here .. at least a bit so.

Basswood Tests

I chopped up some Basswood strips approximately the same size as that supplied in the kit to do some testing. ‘Normally’ – I just charge full speed ahead without regard to anything like trying it before .. so this is relatively new to me!

I am going to do a little experimenting with coloring the wood to see if I can get something beyond the usual gray or brown.

Coloring

I am using Rit Dye (Tan), BlackWood and SilverWood from Builders in Scale

• Rit Dye : This is Rit Liquid Dye, Tan. I used a mix of about 4 parts water to 1 part dye. I say ‘about’ as the ‘measuring’ consisted of a quick and dirty mix. This gives a nice orange look (the bottle says ‘Tan’ but is quite orangy to me). I like a dye as it doesn’t fill the pores like acrylic paint would.
• BIS SilverWood : From Builders in Scale. This is some great stuff and I use it a lot
• BIS BlackWood : from Builders in Scale. This is much the same as the SilverWood just quite a bit darker
• Rit and Silverwood : I just brushed on streaks of the Rit Dye and filled in between with the Silverwood

More Color

Took some of the strips colored earlier and added color

• Rit Dye w/ Silverwood streaks : Took the piece I had dyed earlier with the diluted Rit Tan and added streaks of Silverwood
• Silverwood w/ pure Rit streaks : Took the Rit and Silverwood streaked strip from before and added streals of undiluted Rit dye
• Rit & Silverwood streaks w/ streaks of pure Rit dye

Kit 3D Parts

On page 1 of the instructions, the very next thing you see is “[ ] Paint all 3D details now. Adding weathering can wait until the hoist is assembled.”

The first thing I did was clean up the prints .. which took all of 30 seconds perhaps .. a half-dozen swipes with a emery board took care of that.

I had a can of red-oxide primer on hand and used that to prime the parts. In retrospect I should have bit the bullet and made a store run for gray primer as I decided to use a yellow paint and the gray primer would have been better. Still .. I used Testors yellow .. and found that it takes a good 24 hours to dry and even more – you must recoat if necessary within 3 hours or after 48. This paint is fine for model cars but I think in the future I will stick to something like Rust-Oleum which dries much quicker as I have no need to polish the surface as you might do with a model car.