Best Natural Metal Finish (excluding Alclad II)

Hawkeye can hook you up. He knows all about NMF

I am getting ready to do a P-47 in NMF. I too could use some help here.  Keeping an eye on this thread.

Check out www.Hawkeyeshobbies.com. I believe he has a good tutorial on NMF posted there.  He sells the stuff, too, by the way.

Thanks guys I'll have to give those paints a try! Looks like they work really well.

Almost any natural metal finish can be no better than the base coat. If the base coat is flawed, the nmf will be flawed.  And that base coat should be pretty glossy.  Many primers are pretty mat, so need a coat of something over them.  Examine that final coat before the nmf.  If there are scratches, they need to be sanded or buffed or polished out.  A good nmf is not easy.

The exception is foil.  The sub-surface can have fine scratches or tiny flaws.  But putting on metal foils is a real headache, as far as I am concerned.

Well let me voice my two cents here.

Any paint, will not only show but enhance any flaws in the surface being applied to. A house will lean if its foundation isn't properly done, so holds true with paint on plastic. Mastering each step of the process is critical to any scale modeling project.

Two ways to help reduce the amount of surface flaws visible in NMF paint schemes. Polish out all of the imperfections. Remove them! Or level the surface as much as possible using a good primer, sanded and polished to ease the roughness in texture.

Each paint has different characteristics. Each of the two paints I produce...Spray Metal and Talon have similar results but they also differ. Spray Metal is an enamel paint, and covers much like the lighter colors of other enamel paints. It dries fast and can be tinted using enamel paints. Its sheen can be increase by polishing.

Talon is very similar, it is an acrylic paint and dries with a bit glossier of a finish than Spray Metal does. It is also self leveling and self sealing! It too can be tinted using acrylic colors and also can have its sheen changed by polishing.

Polishing...with my Polishing Powders which gives you a huge variety in tonal contrasts. Or, by using a polishing stick, paper or compound to change the luster of the finish.

So many are afraid of doing NMF on a subject, but it is easy if you don't rush the process or add unnecessary complexities to it. Doing a NMF is no different than just applying any painted finish. Do each step of the process properly and you'll have the results you want. Screw up or omit one and you'll see the error of your decision afterwards...often too late to correct without major effort.

However, with Talon, it can be removed by washing down the model or the area with Windex. If you're using Spray Metal, just like body shop does to repair an area on a car, follow the same procedures, then reapply the paint to that area, blending it in. You'll probably never see where you made the repair. Often a blemish can be cleaned up using a polishing stick and the area resprayed.

So if you're results aren't what you expected when using a NMF, chances are if you look close at the other schemes you have done using "regular" paints...they probably have similar issues too.

FOIL! I used to do my NMF subjects using foil. Some turned out nice, others not so. Foil is labor intensive and is subject to the same issues paint. Any surface flaw will show through the foil, unless you are using really thick foil. A grain of dust, a speck of dirt will show up as the foil is embossed onto the surface.

Adhesives which crystalize will also show as rough areas through the foil. The tools used to apply foil are often too rough on the surface of the foil and leave scratches and rub marks. One of the most noticeable issues with using foil is similar to panty hose. When the foil doesn't contour to the surface it puffs out. When it is forced to contour it often gets a run or stretch mark from the embossing.

Ever see a pair of legs which have been wearing hose all day? The knees begin to pucker and don't contour well. This happens to foil too. As the adhesives cure, the bond to the foil lessens and allows the foil to bag or pull away from the surface. Raised details are really prone to this. A thin crisp panel line will often be wide and ugly because the foil is too thick to contour properly and if it does, the glue can't hold the tension. A really great foil job is rare. It takes a true master modeler to do one properly.

Foil is also subjective to environmental factors...oils from your hands. Solvents. Paint bonding issues...remember aluminum is one of the hardest metals to get paint to adhere to...requires a specific primer.

Back to painting NMF. If you're not happy with the sheen or tonal color of the NMF you need to experiment with tinting and polishing. You also have to determine what phase of the subjects life cycle you are replicating. Shiny new, well weathered and worn...or grossly chromish looking and plan accordingly to get the results you are seeking.

Hope this helps. You can always drop me a note and I will be happy to discuss and make specific recommendations.

Thanks for all of the info guys It helps a lot!

Instead of starting a new post does anyone know if the Model Master Metalizer Sealer is like a glosscoat or a dull coat?

It is more glossy than not...I sometimes use it as a sealer before decals when I don't want to wait for future to cure.

Thanks Hercmech! So it is like future but faster drying?

Not as glossy as future...but it does dry way faster.

While Alclad looks expensive just based on the price of a bottle, there are more ounces in the bottle than in most model paint bottles.  And, more importantly, you put the Alclad on very thin- a single coat- so a bottle does a number of models.  So the cost per model is a tiny fraction of a cost of the model itself.

I hope this is considered somewhat in line with this thread. In the last couple of days I saw an FSM post about using flat coats as a base, sanding that finish to make it smoother in preparation for metal coats. I agree with that entirely, I do much the same when spraying enamel or acrylic camo paint jobs.

After all of the colors have been applied, I let the paint dry for a couple of days and then use 1200 grit sheet, lightly moistened and kept moist. I go over the entire surface, using slight finger tip pressure at the borders of the camo paint colors, which removes the uneven "edge" of the borders. This makes the camo layer borders blend into each other, no hard edges, it softens the lines at the color separations as it would appear on the real aircraft.

I use so little water that I have zero issues with water getting into the interior parts, but enough to keep the sanding area sufficiently wet to avoid dry sanding. I use paper towels to wipe up excess moisture and to remove sanding residue as I move from one area to the next, it also allows inspection to see if more work is needed.

When through with the sanding, (which I consider more like polishing with that fine grit,) I'm left with a semi gloss and very smooth finish. Then I use Pledge or other clear coats as final finish. Subsequent clear coats then have no tendency to show any surface irregularities, this works quite well for me and reliably.

I have used this way for metal finishes, using ultra dark gray or black as the flat base coat and then sanding, a few coats of Pledge and then the metal.

Hope somebody finds it useful.  

Patrick

There was an NMF group build a while back. I spent quite a bit of time looking for an alternative to Alclad. (Painted about a dozen plastic spoons.I don't doubt for a minute that Alclad is the best product and Don is quite right about cost being a zero consideration when the quality of the model is going to rely on the paint job.

My trouble is with lacquer paints. I have little space and circulation is not good. My wife hates lacquer paints and, to be honest, so do I. Hawkeye is no longer selling paints unfortunately. (I have a bottle and am looking forward to using it, but it's beastly thin and will take a light hand.) The thing about metallics is their pigments. It's very hard to get an extremely fine metal pigment because they're made out of metal. (Another good reason to use a mask.) Gunze makes a line called "Super Metallic."  Very good paints, and I'd guess Gunze's answer to Alclad. But any way you cut it, it's still a lacquer - probably less odor than Alclad, but certainly not what I'd like. I have to disagree about Tamiya's spray can metallics - I think the pigments are too coarse. (Now if you were painting "dope" like on a WWI fighter that would help - but if I do that we'll go with Golden fine silver, a great color from a great paint maker.) So I wasn't impressed with Tamiya. I've never used MM metalizer paints but they could be an alternative. The paint I picked for a Revell Texan was Pollyscale Aluminum (darkened for some panels). Pollyscale have their own drummer, but if you get used to them (and their wretched metal covers) they provide a very good paint.

You might want to track down the NMF group build - lots of good info there.

There was a brand- forget which- maybe Roundhouse or Floquil- that had a color called Old Silver.  That was a pretty fair paint for NMF.

Old Silver and companion shade called Bright Silver were lacquer-based Floquil products.

Old Silver:

Bright Silver:

Remember Rub n Buff?  Most of us that tried that only did one or two attempts before we tried something else :-(