dahut wrote: |
Well, I feel duly chastised for being a sodding truncator! So I get that you need TWO sorts of undercoats, then. Nice little comparison you've dome up there. I reckon you are the Alclad King - at tleast you have all the different ones. Neat-o... |
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I seem to have this invisibility gene...my posts tend to go unseen. Sorry, I get a little frustrated at my failure to get the word out effectively.
For some reason the difference in undercoats stuck with me from the first time I read about it, yet it seems more often than not people miss that little detail—and may be put off about having to shoot a gloss black coat for any Alclad metallic finish.
I'm hardly the king, but I've worked and experimented with it some. Typically I primer with Mr Surfacer 1200, and if necessary, shoot the gloss black on top of that. My favorite so far is the ModelMaster automotive black lacquer, though I've used Scalecoat II, Alclad Gloss Black Base, and even ModelMaster gloss black enamel. As long as they're cured, they all seem to work fine.
The last time I did a high shine finish I used Tamiya polishing compound to rub out the MM Lacquer gloss black base before shooting Alclad Polished Aluminum. I thought it was worth the extra work:
Here's a demo shot of four successive coats of chrome (right to left) over polished gloss black. With the final coat I applied a bit too much and went past the peak reflectivity produced by the black underneath.
I also did a test shot over several undercoat colors to see if there was much difference. The idea was to get variantions in adjacent aircraft panels to look more realistic. The differences between colors was rather subtle, which is good, and varied with the metallic on top. I haven't decided yet if it's worth all that masking.
Regards,
Bruce
"You can't have everything--where would you put it?"