I posted this in the Hollywood at War GB, but thought it might be of use here, too…
First off, please excuse the quality of the pictures, as my camera doesn’t do close focus very well (actually, it doesn’t do many things very well).
First, the door, fresh off the Sprue. A little nip here and there, and some minor cleanup needed.
I taped it to a spare piece of evergreen stock for ease of handling. I am only doing one side of it for my little demo here.
First things first. I layed on a base coat with a brush (I used Testors ‘Wood’ enamel), taking care to brush in the direction that the wood grain would be (remember, on the horizontal elements of the door, the wood grain would also be horizontal.
In front of the door I have a container with a small puddle of Testors "Leather’ enamel. I put that in there before I applied the base coat so it would sit for a while and start to thicken up and get goopy as the base coat dried.
After the base coat has dried long enough to be worked with other paints, I used a basic drybrushing technique with the ‘Leather’, again following the grain of the “wood”. Letting the paint thicken up, and using a stiff bristle brush helps to add more “grain” to the door.
Allow that to dry for about an hour.
Last step is to use actual wood stain. For this one I used Minwax Wood Finish #2750, Jacobean, because it is darker than the previous 2 coats. Just like last time, I used a stiff bristle brush, drybrushed, and followed the grain of the ‘wood’.
What you end up with is a pretty passable stained wood door that looks like it has seen a few years of use. If it is a door with an side that faces the exterior of the building (or the building has been destroyed) I will do a flat sealer on the exterior to show that the shellac has worn off, and a semi gloss on the inside. Only thing left to do is to paint the brass fixtures, and add the door handle and hinges.
Hope this helps.
Update: I fixed my camera focus issues by taking advantage of circuit City going out of business and buying a new camera. Here is another picture of the painted door. I still haven’t sprayed it with a Matt sealer, so it still looks too shiny.
