Where's Waldo?

One of the perils of model building is dropping little parts. Something I am certainly not immune to. Sometimes the repeated attacks of fumble fingers is a clue to stop working for awhile.
I did try the jeweler's bib trick shortly, but that ended when I nearly decapitated myself answering the phone. Now I just try to be more careful.
Part of this issue is planning ahead. In the first photo you will notice that I painted my concrete floor a basic grey. Not thinking that the colour is an almost perfect match for the grey tint in most resin. Somewhere in that photo you may find a cast resin brake cylinder. Let me know if you find it. I try not to think of the hours spent over the years crawling on the floor looking for parts.
Yesterday, while building a Westerfield CN gondola, I dropped the brake cylinder. Of course it was down onto the floor searching. After a futile 10 minutes I gave up and dug out another from the spares box.
I found the brake cylinder this morning. It was in my shoe! Sigh.

Doing things a little differently

One of the great things about being a Custom Builder is being called upon to challenge myself to create finishes requested by my clients.
A client sent me an O Scale Chooch Ultra Scale kit of this NKP War Emergency boxcar to build and weather. For me the real challenge was to replicate the varying colours of the individual planks.
I thought that was a perfect time to try something I'd heard about from time to time. After painting the car body the colour requested by the client, I coloured individual boards with various oil paints to create subtle variations. Then I decaled the car and finished weathering it.
I was very pleased with the results, and more importantly so was the client.
Artists oil colours are a really useful medium to have around for weathering. They are easy to use and very forgiving. Since they dry very slowly, it's very easy to undo things and try again. Not often we get that chance.
The CPR car shown here was also weathered with oils. It's not yet done, but hopefully you can see the potential.