Black Primer and Metal Colors

plasticjunkie

Right Don. Best way to describe it is with a picture of my Cutlass. I shot it with testors black gloss enamel from the small botte. Then shot the Alclad and built up the tone till I was happy with it, letting some black show thru. The more Alclad you spray the less reflective it becomes.

 

 

Indeed!  I have varied the look of panels by using polished aluminum Alclad, giving the ship one light coat first, which makes all panels shiny.  Then I mask off some panels and hit those with a light second coat, which makes them more matt.  In fact, I vary the thickness of the coat on these panels to vary the tone and shininess.

Because Alclad does not like masking tape very much, I mask these panels with Post-it notes, which are very low tack.

Right Don. Best way to describe it is with a picture of my Cutlass. I shot it with testors black gloss enamel from the small botte. Then shot the Alclad and built up the tone till I was happy with it, letting some black show thru. The more Alclad you spray the less reflective it becomes.

TomcatGuy

With Alclad (a different animal than the Vallejo) a gloss black base is needed for the high shine varieties like chrome, airframe aluminum, etc. The black provides a base to create the necessary reflective nature of these finishes. If you use them over anything else they don't look right.

As Tomcatguy explains, the undercoat is to enhance the reflection.  One way to look at that is to visualize looking at a building window from the outside during daylight.  If the room behind the window is very dark, the reflections from the window can almost look like a mirror. If there is light in the room it reduces the contrast of the reflection.

Usually I use a seperate primer and black undercoat (a gloss black), though using the black primer may reduce the number of coats needed of the gloss black.

The only times I use primer is either wnen the kit has multi colored parts, resin parts are used or a lot of putty is used. The primer in these cases ensures color uniformity.

Now, for Alaclad high shine tones TG covered it pretty well. For the Alclad non high shine colors, a lighter primer is recommended. Also Alclad paints are hotter and will craze the plastic unless a primer is used.

As far as using black, grey or white primers, it depends on the color application. I use a black primer for darker top coats, the grey and white for the lighter ones.

With Alclad (a different animal than the Vallejo) a gloss black base is needed for the high shine varieties like chrome, airframe aluminum, etc. The black provides a base to create the necessary reflective nature of these finishes. If you use them over anything else they don't look right.


You can also use the black for the regular finishes as it seems to provide a better finish, but it's not necessary.


Go through the Vallejo FB page and there is little demo showing the differences in the finish you can get with the black primer versus a normal grey one.


You absolutely need to be priming to use the AK stuff. You should use primer for anything you paint really. Black is becoming a popular color for priming because it's being used to enhance the painting steps with new techniques. I paint everything over black primer. Including white and yellow with no problems at all.

The main reason for a primer is to aid adhesion, especially over metals and some resins.  There are other reasons, like ease of obtaining proper colors when painting with white or yellow.  For those secondary objectives, certain paints will substitute for primers, but for adhesion, no, primers are best.

So i look at primer like a flat paint?, is this true?,will cract paint act the same as a primer?

Don,

Thanks for the response. After thinking about this for a little, I believe it's more for contrast to ensure a thorough, even coverage that a grey primer may have difficulty providing with some of the metallic colors.

Carl

I sometimes use black primer for a quick flat black area.  Saves seperate primer and paint.  I have, however, found that Krylon black primer does not prime as well as their gray primer, so do not use this technique over metal or resin.