If you want to make it look like real wood, I suggest using the water-based flat acrylic craft paints. Testers are enamel paints for painting model cars for a gloss finish. The acrylics can be diluted with water to make stains and weathered effects. I always use more than one color at a time and blend to produce weathered effects for more realistic finishes. Acrylics are ideal for natural blending and almost dry instantly. Absolutely, everything on my layout is painted with acrylics. From structures to scenery. Anything that looks like wood, masonry, metal, earth, and turf. There are many colors to choose from to make any surfac look like wood, masonry, metal, earth, rock, or vegetation. I prefer the Americana DecoArt, Folkart, and chalk paint from Hobby Lobby or Michael's. For high-quality acrylic pigments, there's also Tamiya or Vallejo. I use a lot of water and mix burnt umber mixed with a dab of gray and black to make stained wood to look like creosote or wethered wood of wood ties, utility poles, and trestles I use burnt umber to make aged looking rust on metal looking surfaces and dab cinnamon stick over it to look like newer rust. The flat finish and blending contrasting colors together is what creates a realistic effect. The acrylics' natural blending tendency makes it easy to achieve desired results. Something that would be extremely difficult to do with the Testors enamel paints and would need to be coated with dullcote to achieve that same natural looking flat finish. Wood, you buy off of the rack at the lumber store isn't one solid color and doesn't come with a gloss finish. Before painting plastics with acrylics, they need to be primed with any flat spray paint made for plastics. I've had excellent results with The Krylon Fusion or Camouflage spray paints or Rustoleum primers using a light coat. They stick extremely well and dry extremely fast. The acrylics need some tooth to stick to the plastic surfaces and produce professional looking realistic results. For the acrylic paints I find I use burnt umber, black, grays, kaki, cinnamon stick, greens, brick red, and red rust to be used for most anything and everything that needs painting on a layout and go through those colors the most so stock up.
Thanks for the information. I will definitely try what you said, the Testors was shiny, and i don't think they are in business anymore, I don't see it being sold in stores. I'm going to print this response out for future reference. Thanks for Watching.
Testor small bottles of paint and their small spray paint cans are still available at Hobby Lobby and hobby stores. It doesn't take much time to develop a technique with desired results. It can become somewhat addictive and before you realize it everything in the room that's nailed down, is painted and weathered. I even added wethered ties and ballast to my tubular track and painted and weathered the track. A couple of good RU-vid sources to check out are Boomer Diorama and Jason Jensen Trains. They are both professional artist that have how-to vidoes for building a layout. They both model in HO, but I don't hold that against them because they are both equally awesome at what they teach, and it works in all scales.
