STARTING THE VW BUS RAT PROJECT

I went out and bought myself a Hasegawa 1/24 type 2 VW van kit and plan on building a rat bus. The finish will be truly used up and rusted. I also want this thing to sit low in the weeds. The kit is a curbside model, meaning that it doesn't have a detailed engine and open hood. I started by lowering the drivetrain by cutting into the frame and lowering the rear suspension. The other thing I did was equip the van with smaller tires so I could clear the wheel wells. I then applied a rust finish to the underbody, this is how I did it.

First step was to paint the frame semi gloss black. Next I dry brushed the entire thing with rust paint from Testors. Drybrushing is done by removing almost all the paint from your brush on a piece of paper until you only have color pigments on it. I then drybrushed steel color paint from Testors all over. After leaving everything to dry overnite, I applied a mixture of brown with a little yellow of dry pastel powder with a dry brush from a make up kit. Apply as much as you need to get the wanted effect. If it doesn't work, simply run the piece under a water tap and start over.

The roof rack you see was made with small styrene rods and the planks are actual wood cut to size and stain with a mix of flat Humbrol clear with a touch of brown pastel. If you want to buy pastels for weathering, buy the dry pastel and not the oil ones.

Keep posted for the next post. :)

Gerry