Metal Foil and a JUG

I have foiled a few planes, and was not satisified with the result.  Unless you do it with a bunch of small pieces, panel by panel, it can be a nightmare. It is so hard to put down a big pieces of BMF without any wrinkles, especially if the area has a compound curve.

Instead, I love Alclad.  Alclad is now my go-to for natural aluminum finish.  There are several different lustres you can use, and a mix-and match looks nice.  The undercoat needs to be flawless because you put down a super-thin coat of Alclad, but other than that it is pretty easy to use if you have an airbrush.

Hi Don....

Fancy coming to England on Holiday and giving me some airbrush lessons???

:)

A number of video lessons on airbrushing are available online!

Gotta say I am with Don on this.  Tried it, didn't like it.  Something about the grain of the foil that bothers me.  The bare metal foil I have left has been relegated to masking duties.  And there are places where it excels at that. Alclad is the way to go.

But... and there is always a but right?  I am by no means an expert on gabby and his rides so there could very well be a bare metal bird he flew.  I am just used to seeing his green/grey HV-A being depicted.  Is there a NMF Gabby bird?

I was thinking same as wing nut.  I believe HV-A, as well as most of the 56th FG bubbletops, were painted in surplus British colors.  The underside may have been NMF though.   I concur with Don's suggestion and go with the Alclad products, there's really no substitute. I have a buddy who foiled a B-29 and it was more effort than it was worth.  I think its still in his "on hold" pile.

If interested in the Alclad NMF, heres my P-47N with an Alclad tutorial in it:

http://cs.finescale.com/fsm/modeling_subjects/f/2/t/151736.aspx

Hope this helps,

Joe

foiled again

Well,Don;

      You have read in my posts about my unintentional Gold medal winner , Right ? It was MONOGRAM'S " Century Series F-100 . Yes there's about 150 to 200 pieces of foil on the bird .The point was brought up about grain .That's why I use cheap foil .There is little if any process roller graining on the foil . The beautiful part of this is simple.

    If you look at the plane in bright light, every panel has just a slightly different sheen , just like a real metal plane . Now if you want a single surface of metal sheen then do as I do . I use a Brand New No. 01 handle from X-Acto that I put in a lathe and contoured it as a burnishing tool . The result of rubbing then produces a chrome like sheen everywhere the tool is used .

    I personally don't like Alclad. Why , wel,l although I have a fairly well equipped building area I do not have a space to spray metalizer products of any kind , besides I don't like the finish . It may be as smooth as a baby's behind, but ,  it still doesn't look metallic enough to me and I followed the instructions to the letter .

    Besides I like doing foil. I find it calms me down as much as painting or decaling does other folks who really like doing that .          T.B.      Want to really go through a lot of Alclad OR Foil ? Try doing Monogram's B-29 or Amt's YB.49 ! Oh,and I did find One picture of a P-47 of Gabby's that was bare metal all over . It was in an old Air Power book I bought used at the Library .

Joe;

     Well,it certainly is a beautiful model . Well done too! There is just this though . I still think it looks like silver paint ! It may be just me. But every real plane I ever worked on that was bare metal , looked like polished or slightly weathered polished aluminum , or Stainless and even the Magnesium panels were off color but very shiny .

     I digress though  .I have Never seen a military airplane up close and personal that looked like it was painted except maybe a Very Tired B-52 from S.A.C. Maybe it's a mind block or something .

   I tried Alclad for car chrome and although shiny it didn't have that " Chrome reflective mirror" like shine to me .        T.B.

The degree of shine with Alclad is critically dependent on the undercoat.  For the Chrome or Polished Aluminum stuff, you need a flawless gloss black undercoat.  Then you must put on the Alclad very thin, else it will kill the mirror-like reflection.

There's some interesting pros vs. cons going on here.  Interesting, Raymond

Okay, Don ;

 I wll give you a point .I tested some last night in the garage(car was outside ) I used chrome matalizer with that black undercoat .Talk about thin ? How much paint is supposed to go on there ? I painted four areas of a sheet of plastic painted with primer and then prepped like it should be .

     I now have a sheet of .020 that goes from Chrome ( really ) to polished chrome to dull chrome to what looks like really silver paint .

   Is this what to expect? Now to clarify .I painted in a clean garage door closed and I have silvery over spray all over in the small area where I did it  . And it rubbed of on my skin this morning . Oh, it stayed on the plastic sheet real good and didn't change shade or color when I over sprayed it with

   Testors (" Boyds Clear ") Model-master paint . If I can do it cleaner , you may have made a convert.We'll see.     T.B.

Ever since discovering Alclad, there's no looking back. Here are some pictures of my 1/48 Voodoo I just finished for the Century Series GB done in several shades of Alclad. The metallic tones are just incredible  making the plastic look like real metal and not just a silver paint..

WOW  P J   what a great finish !

I take it that you use gloss black as an undercoat, but wich Alclad do you use for the "shiny-ness "     I've had some decent results with Polished Alum. but not qute as shiny as yours.  I'm hoping that the IPMS in Orlando will have some Alclad at a decent price whereby I'm going to stock up.

Thanks JJ. used Testors gloss black and Alclad polished alum over that. Also used Alclad white alum for panel variations, Alclad dark steel mixed with white alum to get tonal variations on the exhaust area and cans.

Word of caution, Alclad Aqua Gloss WILL kill some of the shine of the high polished finishes. I used it on my Voodoo and killed maybe 5% of the shine. Alclad Klear Kote Gloss will not affect the shine. I will be using the Klear Kote on the high shine finishes in the future.

Are you going to the Modelpalooza show in a couple of weeks?

Absolutely !  been looking foward to it and saving up for it for months now.  i love how each and everything you buy there saves like 8 bucks in shipping costs.  there is not much in the way of LHS in my area especially if I need something specific like AM parts or even Tamiya products.