Rustall and Ships

I build in 1/700 and, quite honestly, use the RustAll system to rust the buildings and roofs in the dioramas, not the ships, because it's too hard to control the results in the small areas that I need it for in the ships. Even a total rust bucket isn't completely all-over rust. I will use either paints - most often judiciously dry brushed - or pastels, as wing_nut suggests. Depending on the scale, I think either would work well.

Here is an example of drybrushing, using Testors rust (1185), flat brown (1166) and orange (1127) and Model Master Rust (1785). Of those, the flat brown looked the most like rust when drybrushed:

Here is one that was given a few rust streaks with pastel chalks, rubbed onto a piece of paper and then transferred to a paintbrush and streaked down the sides of the hull where you wanted the rust to appear. The effect is a little subtler and in my opinion better if you just want a little rust. I use oil-free pastels in shades of brown, gray, rust and black:

Here is the last project, the only one I used the Rust All system on, the warehouse roofs. The ship isn't very rusty because it's brand new:

I can't remember the last time I was in the ships forum but the title of your thread caught my eye.

I have never used rust all on a ship... never but a ship but I have used it on armor.  It's a decent product but I am not too sure how well it would do when working in the smaller scale of the ship world.  To be honest I don’t use it at all any more because there are so many new washes and pigments that replicate rust so beautifully.  With the "liquids" being more paint-like and just the nature of what pigments are and how they are applied, they are better suited to making a rust streak done the side of a ship in 1/350 or 1/700 scale.

Being the opinion of and armor/aircraft guy I am curious what the “shipwrights” think.