As I am not that much of a weathering expert, I decided to experiment a bit on one of the 3D-printed wholestick trucks. I started out by taking the truck apart again and spraying a layer of Tamiya grey primer on the chassis & couplers. Once this had completely dried, I applied a layer of Tank Grey from Humbrol.
The rust was simulated by dusting the chassis & couplers with some self-made weathering powders. They were made by sanding down pastels from Conté à Paris, which sell a great set of 12 sketching pastels with colours ranging from red-brown to black. I first applied a base of dark brown powder and sealed it with a layer of Anti-Shine Matt Varnish from The Army Painter, which is a great alternative for Testors Dullcote. After that I applied a couple of touches of red-brown powder and finished it off with a layer of Anti-Shine Matt Varnish.
That brought me to the harder part … trying to make the 3D-printed parts look like weathered wood. I started with the layer of grey primer again and then painted a thin layer of diluted white-brown paint on top of it (the paints I use, are the Model Color acrylics from Vallejo and I dilute them with Flow-Aid from Liquitex). This layer was followed by a dark grey wash and I finalised the weathering by dry-brushing the part with ivory, which really brought the part to life and gave it the weathered wood appearance I was looking for.
Although the winch is not part of the model yet, I did add the chain that holds down the wholestick cane on a loaded truck. It was weathered with the Conté à Paris powders and was glued on top of the model. After assembling all the parts of the truck together again, it received a final layer of Anti-Shine Matt Varnish.
The overall result looks quite good … probably even better in real life then in the picture shown above. As a next step, I will also weather the second printed truck to see if I can get the same result or even improve it a bit. I will add a load of modelled wholestick cane, but still need to find the best material to model it with …