I recently finished the old Nichimo Nachi, and its been sitting on the mantle, waiting for a glass case to be made, and a final weathering before getting locked under glass…
Being bored this evening, I decided to weather the model with a wash of inks, using my tried and tested method applied with an airbrush. All went well until the wash was applied and started to dry, the whole model turned chalk white…Egads.
I finally surmised that it had to be the non-distilled water I used to thin the ink wash…rather than screwing things up even further, I applied the wash to an old tank model I never finished, and the same exact thing happed, except this time I had a guinea pig I could test recovery methods on. I tried a clear flat over the top, that didn’t work too well, but I found that a coat of Future eliminated the chalky paint. A coat of flat over the top of the Future returned the model to its normal look.
So why am I telling you this? Two reason…In case it happens to someone out there who’s never experienced this before, you don’t have to trash your model and give up, thinking it’s beyond saving. Secondly, don’t use tap water to thin your washes. Buy a gallon of distilled water and use that. As an old-timer when it comes to ship models, I should have known better. It’s never happened to me before, but it must have been the combination of inks, water, humidity, paints, air pressure, cold beer, and all the other factors that made it happen this time around.
Jeff