Help with weathering black please!

toning it down will certainly help... there is a 'scale' effect with painting models that the smaller the model, the darker the color appears. Color of Eagles recommends this:

http://www.aircraftcolors.com/

(about halfway down on the page) it may be different with other brands but whitening your paint will certainly work. Recently in a GB someone did a nightfighting hurricane and used RLM 66 for the exterior and it came out great! I'd just practice using an old model or such until you find something you find plasing to your eye...with pure black I have known people to use a little white and a touch of blue too... so it doesn't look "too black"

hope this helps some!

.....and here is that night fighter Hurricane:



As Tom said the base colour was RLM 66, not my idea, I saw it saw it over on Hyperscale on a Cr42 nightfighter, with the panel centres in a lightened version of the base coat, and the panel edges in a darkened version of the same.

Looks complicated, but isn't, and to my eye at least, looks more like a 'scale' black.

Karl

Thanks Karl! I thought it was you but didn't wanna go back through 2200 posts from the BOB GB to find out!

I saw the scaled-down black from Polyscale. It might work.
The problem with white is that it will make the paint look gray, and it will make the color (any colors) look flat. (Less vivid.) I use flash to tone down paints, but I don't know if it works with black as well.

After trying several combos I got what I think looks pretty good so far for the black. Of course what it will look like after the weathering will count. A few test mixes did not look right. Black with white was just blah gray. Black with some gray was just a little less blah gray. I ended up with black and some of the underside blue and it looks good. The color shift in the pics doesn’t really show it well. Nice tint and it is black without being BLACK.

It's generally more effective to get the scale black by adding some dark red - 50% black & 50% Tamiya red-brown is a good mix. This will look black but allow plenty of scope for weathering.