I just came across something that might be useful for weathering, especially where Mando armor is concerned, it's called an air eraser; basically it's a small sand blaster for the hobbyist. It looks a lot like an airbrush and the hose looks like it would connect to an airbrush air compressor as well but it spits out sand instead of paint. Depending on the abrasive used it might be a really good way of eliminating or at least minimizing the amount of liquid mask needed to do those scrapes, scratches, and gouges where the undercoat(s) of paint shows. The forum that I saw this one showed the results of someone who used baking soda in his air eraser to weather the top of a model car and the results looked pretty good to me.
The nice thing about this air eraser is that it's pretty cheap, you can buy one from Harbor Freight Tools for only $24.99. The only possible downside to the air eraser that I can see is that it's a bit on the small side so it might take a bit of sand or baking soda to weather a full set of armor but I don't think it would cost too much to use baking soda for most of the weathering and reserve sand for when/where heavy weathering is needed.
Something else I found that might be useful is a system of weathering paints and washes that's supposed to be popular amongst military modelers developed by a Spanish modeler named Mig Jimenez. What I saw used was Europe Dust P028 a powdery substance that is mixed together with MIG Thinner for washes; once the thinner dries it's supposed to leave a pretty convincing looking mud coating. I haven't used this stuff myself and I've only seen it used in a picture online but it looks like it might have some potential, you can see what the results look like here: Destroid Defender "Angel Face" just scroll down toward the bottom of the page to read and see the relevant section.
The nice thing about this air eraser is that it's pretty cheap, you can buy one from Harbor Freight Tools for only $24.99. The only possible downside to the air eraser that I can see is that it's a bit on the small side so it might take a bit of sand or baking soda to weather a full set of armor but I don't think it would cost too much to use baking soda for most of the weathering and reserve sand for when/where heavy weathering is needed.
Something else I found that might be useful is a system of weathering paints and washes that's supposed to be popular amongst military modelers developed by a Spanish modeler named Mig Jimenez. What I saw used was Europe Dust P028 a powdery substance that is mixed together with MIG Thinner for washes; once the thinner dries it's supposed to leave a pretty convincing looking mud coating. I haven't used this stuff myself and I've only seen it used in a picture online but it looks like it might have some potential, you can see what the results look like here: Destroid Defender "Angel Face" just scroll down toward the bottom of the page to read and see the relevant section.
