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I am building a big metal Morkanaut and I know it is going to eat up a bottle of Nuln Oil to wash the whole thing. I usually metal basecoat, wash in nuln, dry brush, and finally weather. I was thinking about trying to dip and spin the parts in ebony minwax . I have never tried it before. How does that stuff dry? Can you paint over top of it? Thanks!

Never used ebony, used lots of the dark brown though. Dries super glossy, will need a clear matte coat if you want to paint over it. It's pretty thick too. Still, I love the results and highly recommend.

Its a little less controllable i feel like a giant model might give you a bad time.

you could always make your own wash with cheapo acrylic paint and watering it down with a drop of dish soap.

I gave it a shot. Not super pleased but it will do. It tends to slide down the model and puddle. It may just be the satin finish that is throwing me off. Dry brushing straight overtop seems to work too. I think some typhus corrosion, rust, and a matte finish will bring it all together. I'll post a pic when I'm finished.

Honestly I would have said if you're happy with Nuln Oil, just stick with it

The Morkanaut is a (googles) $105USD model A bottle of Nuln oil is $7.50, at most you're going to use, what, 1/4 of a pot if you slop it on decently thick? So that's $1.88 worth of wash on a $105 model, personally I'd be saying "screw it, just use the Nuln Oil".

If you want a cheaper option, you can buy an ink rather than a wash, they're much higher density and you have to thin them down if you want to use them like a wash. So a $7.50 bottle of Nuln is 24ml, a 17ml pot of Vallejo Black Ink is about $3USD (or use Daler Rowney inks, or P3 inks, or Liquitex inks), to use it as a wash you thin it down probably about 5 to 10 times, so you end up with 85 to 170ml of wash from a single 17ml bottle of ink.

Lester Bursley famously has a wash recipe...

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/261541.page

Personally I'm too disorganised to do that, so I just put a drop of ink on my palette, 3 or so of drops of vallejo flow improver a maybe 3-5 drops of water and that seems to work okay.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Honestly I would have said if you're happy with Nuln Oil, just stick with it

The Morkanaut is a (googles) $105USD model A bottle of Nuln oil is $7.50, at most you're going to use, what, 1/4 of a pot if you slop it on decently thick? So that's $1.88 worth of wash on a $105 model, personally I'd be saying "screw it, just use the Nuln Oil".

If you want a cheaper option, you can buy an ink rather than a wash, they're much higher density and you have to thin them down if you want to use them like a wash. So a $7.50 bottle of Nuln is 24ml, a 17ml pot of Vallejo Black Ink is about $3USD (or use Daler Rowney inks, or P3 inks, or Liquitex inks), to use it as a wash you thin it down probably about 5 to 10 times, so you end up with 85 to 170ml of wash from a single 17ml bottle of ink.

Lester Bursley famously has a wash recipe...

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/261541.page

Personally I'm too disorganised to do that, so I just put a drop of ink on my palette, 3 or so of drops of vallejo flow improver a maybe 3-5 drops of water and that seems to work okay.

Good tip on the wash recipe. Thanks. I did the same calculations in my head and the miser in me still wants a cheaper option. Which is idiotic because I regularly blow money on brushes and other supplies. For big pieces too, like the torso of a Morkanaut, the large can was much more effective. Now that I have dry brushed the entire thing and started picking out details, I am starting to like the results more. Definitely more opaque and greasy looking than nuln oil.