Bare Metal Foil

Welcome to the forum, icedragon ! Here's a link to a FSM article. Its a Adobe Acrobat document. There's a link to download it, if you don't already have it.
Click on the Back Issues> Feature Stories> 2002>Simulate Natural Metal Finishes.
Hope this helps !

Pixilator
Thanks for the reference, but I need more help than that. That's the aticle I read that got me started on this quest.

As far as how large an area to do at one time, you should probably try to follow the panel lines so that you can minimize the seams. Although if you burnish it down really good you can make the seams virtually disappear anyway. Bare-Metal is very thin so if you use a Q-tip or something to burnish it down with you shouldn't lose any of the detail on the kit. Unfortunately, I can't help you with painting and masking over it as that is something I have never tried.

Ray

Ice,

Welcome to the forum. You will be very surprised to see how easy bmf is to work with. It bends just around every curve. The way I started working with it was to try it out on an old or junky model so I could get the feel for it. As far as masking it, I wouldn't recommend it. For example, on the Mustang. I'd paint the anti-glare area first. You don't really need to pay too much attention to sharp demarcation lines here. Just paint the general area OD or black depending on the required color scheme. Then, as you apply the bmf just cover up to where the anti-glare panel should be. Did that make sense? Same thing if you have wing tip colors for example. Just paint the wing tip and then cover the wing with bare metal foil while leaving the tip color exposed. I hope this helps. It might take one or two planes to really get the hang of it (I'm working on my 4th plane covered with bmf) but it produces a nice finish. Enjoy and let us know how it turns out.

Eric

Eric & Ray

Thanks for the help. We'll beat this thing yet -- one step at a time! R/C planes are much easier -- they're bigger.

Park flyers! Yeah Baby! Love my 'lectrics.

Eric

Electrics? What on earth are those? Gotta have my glow-goo. I love the smell of nitro in the morning. Currently working on a T-28B. Tell you what thought -- all the work I did with plastics sure helped a lot. Now I've come full circle and gotten back into building plastic models again --AND I LOVE IT. Talk later.

It says in the article that BMF can be painted after you coat it with Future. Has anyone tried this:
From the article:

Apply several coats of Future acrylic floor polish with a flat, carefully cleaned brush or with an airbrush. Future seals the foil, protects it from oxidation, and forms a primer coat that is needed under any additional painting or weathering. (Enamels, artist’s oils, lacquers, or acrylic paints don’t adhere well to bare foil.) Future also adds to the luster of the metal, and forms a perfect surface for the application
of decals.

I plan to use Future over my BMF -- I'll let you know if this techique works. I would think it should. My main concern was that the masking would pull all my hard work off the aircraft.

Future should go over it no problem. However, be aware that this will make it very glossy and some people prefer metal finishes to be more 'flat' or 'satin' in appearance. You should be pretty safe to mask over the future though. If there are areas you'd like to be 'flat', then spray those areas with a clear-flat.

Good luck!!

Murray

Murray
Thanks! You've confirmed what I was hoping for. With your help and all the others, I'll get through this yet. I love trying new things -- I just don't want to have pay to do everything 2 or 3 times. It never hurts to ask the people that have done it before questions -- it'll only make me a better modeler.

Randy