SPA Modeler

Fermis my man! Thank you! And you’re right, it’s never really enough. But this evening in a bit tired, it’s been a long day at work, man oh man.

As to your method of working with bare metal, thank you very much for breaking that down, as it gives me a whole lot of food for thought, and I always appreciate that! Thanks so much!! I hope you’re doing well out there, too. It was great hearing from you.

That's a great tip, Fermis and makes a lot of sense since the metal paints that we commonly use are so thin and sensitive to what is underneath. Good way to impart some tonal variation without having to mask over the metal finish.

I still dislike doing metal finishes myself. The comfort level is not very good and I can never get the look that is in my head. I think Spare Parts is looking a-ok now Kenny! Good adjustment!

John, he sure does! It’s a method which makes it easier for me at least to get my head around accomplishing that exact objective- tonal variation in metal. For me it kinda bridges my mental gap, because that’s how I’ve always painted if you break it down and look at it, uh, philosophically. I like building paint up layer by layer using what’s underneath the impart certain characteristics to the finish you end up seeing. But with metals I was trying to hammer myself into a way of doing things which seemed totally alien to me. His tip helped me
Look at it differently.

And thank you John. And I’m with you, man, natural metal, bare metal, whatever- it ain’t comfortable to me either and probably won’t be for a while. That tip sure helps though, I’ll say that.

Fermis wrote:
Tip (maybe): I discovered, by accident, that if you pick out a couple panels, mask and paint them with a "primer"...when you spray over them with "metal", they will have a different "tone". That said...that was back when I used rattlecan MM Metalizer and would just spray bomb the entire model with "Aluminum Plate". I have since changed my methods for NMF, but the old way still holds up nicely on the shelf! I would imagine any "metal" would get the same result.
I liked that method, as all the masking was done before any metal...which we all know can be quite delicate and easily destroying with masking.

Do you do the rest of the aircraft in gloss black aside from the primer panels before your metallic paint? This sounds like an interesting technique to try out...

Carlos,

I’m operating under the assumption that this is what he means. And I dig it, a lot. I’m considering scaling it down and spraying various blacks- primer, flat, matte, etc. through a stencil over the black primer base just to see what happens. This concept of his is, quite frankly, awesome.

I’ll have to try it sometime.

I like to use several different colors under Alclad if I want variation. I think dark blue is a very good general substrate, better than black unless you want a really reflective finish.

Dude, what’s hooked me is- I don’t necessarily think that for this project a highly reflective, high-shine metalizer is appropriate. This thing’s a beat-up, re-build station hack after all. So absolutely, maybe a move away from a highly polished, gloss substrate along with not using, say, Alclad Airframe Aluminum would be just the ticket I need. That said, whooo-wee what happened last Thursday really freaked me out. I mean Hell, man, I’ve put great paintwork down over totally less-than-perfect, and even barely-passable primer coats before with no problems. The main way I paint let’s me do that. Can’t do that with metal though. Weird stuff happens... HOWEVER— what if you’re not necessarily going for a high, reflective shine? This changes things!

The thing with metal paint is every little flaw shows and gets magnified.

You can sure say that again. Holy cow.