Every few months check and refresh your paint supplies.  Whichever paints you use acrylics, enamels, or other solvent-based paint it is a good practice to check up on your paints and to give them a good shaking.  Check your bottled paints, do they need to be refreshed with a dab of water or mineral spirits?  What about your marker\paint pens?  Then you might also want to do a spot check on your glues, putty, clay, stains, and pigments, to make sure they are in usable condition.

Hopper Weathering Clinic II
By Bill Mock
December 2009

So here's how those BN Hoppers turned out after the surface rust dried. Not bad. I'll [ ... ]

I've finally added as much plaster cloth as I expect I'll need, and have moved on to priming the base before painting it.  Priming made it look unfamiliar, [ ... ]

Uncle Sugar gave me a bit a change, so as soon as I could, I got in touch with my favorite dealer.  Picked up another B unit for the CB&Q (this [ ... ]