Thanks to corporate television, this whole “barn find” thing is getting old. This tendency to call rusted out junk “patina” has been taken too far. The collectibles market always takes things too far, as there’s always people trying to whip up those with more money than sense into paying 4x more for something than its worth so they can “jump on the train.” Now, having said this, its also true that some of this turn toward the “distressed” look is born of necessity; those of us that love the cars of the 1940’s and ‘50’s are really starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel now, as the supply of good mid-century iron is just running out.
I love me a “homebilt” as much as any other greaser; I used to build rat rods myself and I was getting damn good at it until a series of changes and setbacks altered the course of my life and pulled me away from the direction I was going as a professional body worker. So today, I work as an industrial network technician and I build slot cars. I’m not complaining; the money is good and I’m having fun doing what I’m doing, but a real gearhead never gets over it: something in me still longs for those days of grime, rust, and and sweat.
So…I decided to experiment with making my own “barn find” slot car using this red Model Motoring ’41 Willys body. I’ve had this lying around for a while not knowing what to do with it, and then a while ago while visiting a local hobby shop I picked up one of these weathering kits.
I’m sure most fellow hobbyists will agree that Tamiya products are top of the mark, and looking for a way to “weather” the Greenlight garages on my diorama to make them look a little less “plastic,” I decided to try an old trick of model railroaders, using colored chalk dust to add some effects. Well, I still haven’t gotten around to weathering my garage walls, but one day I decided to crack this kit open and try weathering a car instead.
It was simple enough; using the mascara applicator I applied a healthy dose of all 3 of these colors-gray, brown, and rust-to see what the effect would be. Initially I was just doing this as an experiment to see what would result, especially on a bright red body, but it turns out that using all 3 together was quite effective; each layer added to the “distressed” look, appearing as mud, rust, and fade. More pleased than I thought I’d be, I then cleaned off the areas where I wanted apply my Patriotic AMT decals and, after a wait for proper setting, applied 2 more coats of the weathering chalk. I was so happy with how it looked that I then decided to try something else I haven’t done until now: spraying the entire car, windows and all, with a Krylon matte clearcoat, hoping it would not only seal the chalk in but also give the body a permanent dull finish.
In hindsight it might have been better if I’d masked the windows and then chaulked them later after the clearcoat dried to dull them down, as the windows now look a little too fogged, but it did produce the results I wanted, giving the car a weather-beaten look of ground-in dirt and neglect. Unfortunately red is the worst color to try to simulate rust on, and the clearcoat did somewhat negate the affect of the red chalk, but it enhanced the gray and light brown, so what I ultimately had when it dried was a pleasing effect. It’s not pro-quality of course, but its not bad for a 1st try if I do say so myself; hey, it’s a real “homebilt” rat rod! Think I can get fifty grand for it at a Mecum auction?!
To finish off the effect I fitted the car with with stock Auto World rear wheels in a dull gold that were takeoffs from…something, I don’t remember what, adding the cool looking “dirty whitewall” slicks, and then complemented it up front with a set of stock-sized MEV chrome reverses shod with Joe Skylark whitewalls; I intentionally chose the worst pair of these tires I had-ones I originally planned not to use because the white sidewall is uneven and partly worn off-but for this project it was exactly what I needed!
As if all that wasn’t cool enough, it’s pretty fast too; I fitted it with an old used chassis I had left sitting around for a while as I remembered it as being a poor performer, but it seems to like this body, because it not only goes well in a straight line but it corners pretty well too…a little unrealistic considering the subject matter, but hey, I’ll take it!
As a “lockdown weekend” afternoon experiment I’m rather happy with how this turned out! Whether or not I’ll attempt similar projects in the future remains to be seen, but as always I learned something, used a body and chassis I had been wondering what to do with for months, and added a pretty cool car to my fleet! Not bad for a weekend’s work!
what is that?