Anyone else using Pan Pastels?

[MichaelWinicki]

I him-hawed over purchasing a set of'em for quite a while after reading about them via Tony Koester and his MR article, thinking "Don't I have enough weathering powders?"

I saw that Fifer Hobby, http://www.fiferhobby.com/html/weathering_powders_and_supplie.html had some on special so I ordered a set.

Nice selection of colors and maybe the best part? No powder/dust flying around.  I hate getting out the powders due to the mess that they make, but not with these Pan Pastels.  Very neat and tidy. 

Also they seem to stick pretty well to shiny surfaces.  I'd been contemplating on how to weather Caboose Industry ground throws, not wanting to go the powder route in that I may "gum up the works" on the throw.  But these pastels are so fine... Well I took a shot and weathered one using the "Raw Umber" pastel.   It did a nice job subduing the shiny black and the throw still functions perfectly fine. 

The selection of "rust" colors is very good and the pastels mix easily.

Color me impressed!

[jimmo]

I use them as well. I am very satisfied with the results I'm getting.

[mark dance]

Me too but as accent colours. Primary weathering is by air brush.

Md

[Jeff AKA St0rm]

I have a few colours and they work great. I also use them to accent airbrushing.

[Puddington]

I use them too; mainly as a white or grey base coat for mixing powder rust on to. I find that it gives me a very good base with which to create multi layered effects. The white is also good for spill effects on grain hoppers and cement hoppers.

[Philip H]

I'm looking at these as well - though I just picked up a couple of sets of Tamiya Weathering Powders that seem to mirror these in performance.  Hopefully I'll have some pics to post this weekend - which this thread needs FWIW.

[MichaelWinicki]

OK, here's an image... underwhelming as it is...



Both roofs were done originally using the "Liquid Rust" that Model Tech Studios puts out, which is good for what it is, but it only yields one shade of rust and that is on the orangy-side.

So I used the Pan Pastels to quickly give the upper roof a little more reddy-rust.  The lower roof was not done.

I did do kind of a swank job on Canadian National reefer, replacing the ultra-thick running board with an etched brass replacement 

[mark dance]

the rust on these hoppers was done with pan pastels.







as was the spillage on these tanks.





As with all my rolling stock weathering (save the locos where I spend more time), I am not trying to achieve individual works of art...just acceptable weathering jobs so the fleet blends in.  For this the Pan Pastels are a great tool in the arsenal for doing more heavily weathered "spot" effects without a tremendous amount of labour.

md

[MichaelWinicki]

First did a "fade" and then used pan pastels to add some dirt/grime.

Gotta say at this point I'm just going to pan pastel the trucks on all my cars and not bother taking them off and painting them.  The pastels seem to adhere fairly well and there's no burst of powder released into the air like with weathering powders.  Plus I like the results and the ease at mixing colors.