Painfully aware that I’ve started to neglect this thread, I thought I’d pen a few lines, fellow Westerners, to assure you that I’ve not quite given up on this project; not yet, anyway. Pleased also to report that my anger management therapy has paid dividends: despite testing my patience to the limit, the triangular shaped bits that represent the shed fascias have managed to avoid being chucked in’t bin, although depending on the outcome later on today, it’s T minus four hours or so and counting until launching of said shapes takes place.
Why your angst, Jonte, most won’t bother asking? Well, despite a roaring success with emulating peeling paint on my test piece a couple of posts back, try as I might, the actual bargeboards which are the target of this treatment don’t wanna know. In fact, I’ve rubbed down the paint and started again with the weathered wood substrata below acrylic top coat, that I’ve almost sanded the wooden bargeboards away; one or two having cracked in places around the edges as they’re now so thin.
So later today, I’m trying for the last time, folks, and if this doesn’t work, I’m giving up on the desired effect and just going to run with a soot stained appearance: which is what it will mostly comprise of anyway, even if the process succeeds, as this bore the brunt of all those sooty old engines. Still it would have been satisfying to have seen it in places.
I’m really not sure why it didn’t work following the initial test. I’ve tried leaving the spirit resist for longer and for shorter periods to dry; applied it thinly and plastered it on; applied the top acrylic coat in thin layers and slightly more concentrated layers; and still the stuff didn’t budge.
This time, however, I’m going to use turps as a resist and try just one ‘thick’ coat of topcoat to see if I can finally succeed.
On a final note, I’m wondering whether the type of wood used is at the root of all this vexation. I’ve since tried a second test using the same wood as the initial test (bass wood) and achieved more or less the same results as the first. However, the wood used for the bargeboards is veneer of unknown origin as it’s finer for 4mm use than the thicker basswood, so perhaps therein lies the problem? We’ll see.
Anyway enuff scribing. Here are the boards showing an umpteenth attempt at weathered wood before they’re also lost to the ether:
Also, here’s the interior central fascia posted to show how I tried to ‘remedy’ the above failed process on the wooden lower beam:
Here, when the process didn’t work, I thought *** it! and reached for the acetone - we’ll it works on enamels why not acrylics? Once the sheen had gone from the acetone, I attacked it with parcel tape.
The beam on the left was mostly a single long length pulled off in one go, the one on the right being dabbed at in random fashion (or as random as any of us can possibly be). Not sure whether it’s worked or not really, but again, it’ll be weathered along with some more of the boarding above it before final fixing, which should hide a multitude of sins
Wish me luck!
Jonte