Exhaust colour

You may get lots of diffent opinions on this, which will be good. In 1/48, I usually start with a coat of flat black, and follow with a very thin coat of a rust color. I'm a dinosaur too, so Floquil oxide red works well for this.

Hope this helps,

Tom

You mean the rust on the exhausts, right?  I'm not sure the specific engine makes too much of a difference to the technique.  I start with flat black, then dry-brush browns and red brown on top of it.  For staining trailing behind the exhausts in the air stream, I use pastel chalks-black, brown, and red brown, but also white, and usually darkest in the center of the staining, towards lighter colors around the outside.  If I can find photos of the airplane I'm building, I like to check them and adjust what I'm doing.

Too my mind, the new stacks with zero time on engine are not really black- I think of them as a dark grayish blue.  So I start with a very dark, flat blue, and do the rust wash over that.  With medium time engines I sometimes like to do some burning on the stacks, especially larger scale.  For the burning I either dry brush, or wash, with a tint of red and lighter blue and easier on the rust.

This is a picture of the exhaust on an operational (Witchcraft)  B-24. https://www.cybermodeler.com/aircraft/b-24/b-24_walk2.shtml  . It seems to be the color of rust. Note that the material used for the nacelle in the area of the exhaust looks like stainless steel. It must get really hot in that area.

Thanks guys, that's really helpful. Best to get these things right BEFORE building the exhaust onto the back of the engine!

I like to use Humbrol Track Color (178 I think) as a base color and then dry brush on Testors Steel or Jet Exhast for the top color.

Here is an exhaust ring of a T-6 where I work, you can clearly see the sifferent heat spots and the lead (white patch) where there is turbulance on the rear section od the exhaust stub.

T-6 exhaust by Theunis van Vuuren, on Flickr

Theuns

I would not trust the turbocharger pictures on the warbird bombers, I am pretty sure they are disabled as the airplanes are not flown at high altitude.  For low altitude flying the engine superchargers are sufficient.  Those GE turbochargers took a lot of maintenance.

I realize that this is a factory new aircraft, but I’d go more towards heat discoloration and less towards rust. I’d wager that the exhausts were made from a stainless type steel

I so wish I could get Humbrol Track Colour! That stuff was excellent, but the current Humbrol Railway Colours range is a pathetic shadow of it's former self

There are different materials for exhausts and manifolds.  Some engines had cast iron manifolds, which weathers/ages differently than fabricated manifolds made from various steel alloys.  But with weight an issue in aircraft, fabricated manifolds were indeed the most popular.

ChrisJH666

I so wish I could get Humbrol Track Colour! That stuff was excellent, but the current Humbrol Railway Colours range is a pathetic shadow of it's former self

 

Humbrol re issued the color recently. My old tin was used up years ago. But early this year during a trip to my shop that stocks Humbroll they had a box of new tins of the stuff. Now if they would only re issue Brown Bess, French Artillery Olive, and  Unbleached Wool...

Alclad makes an Exhaust Manifold color paint that mirrors the rusty look on those used manifolds very well. I use it or Testers Rust for well worn birds and steel with light blues and reds on less used engines. Trial and error is where its at. Work with different methods till you find one you like and works for you.

BK

Thanks to all! Loads of useful info there. I've come up with a paint mix which approximates that in the photo of the T-6 engine, which is thinly applied over a black base. Should do the trick

This is a photo of a B-17 exhaust. The pipe is between the engine's exhaust manifold and the supercharger.

I think that it is a great example of an exhaust pipe. I would use a base of rust and then drybrush a dark gray and a little black.

Thanks JohnnyK. Nice photo