First lesson is examine what is on the label. I poured some Alclad II airbrush cleaner into one of my plastic paint cups and six seconds later it was all over my spray booth. Turns out its mostly MEK. Second lesson is even if you think your airbrush is clean, clean it again. It took me two hours to get my Badger Krome airbrush apart this morning after I sprayed Alclad II primer on two Tamiya 1/48 P-51D last night. I thought I ruined my airbrush.
I don’t know if it’s my setup or my airbrush but at 15 PSI the Alclad primer splattered pretty bad. I upped the PSI to 30 and it worked much better.
I shot the Alcad II primer over Tamiya White surface primer after I tested it out on a B17 with the same primer. So far no issues.
Just finished primer on both planes. I decided to wait until tomorrow to spray the Alclad II ALC101 Aluminum. Not sure how long the primer needs to cure I’d rather be safe then sorry.
It’s tricky stuff. My best results were when I sprayed a diplay stand, molded in glossy black plastic, directly with Alclad II polished aluminum with NO PRIMER. Just put on one thin coat with the airbrush and it’s mirror-shiny!
If you have a model made of black or dark gray plastic, I would test spray a scrap of sprue without any primer and see what happens. I’ll bet you could do the whole model without primer if it’s nice and clean and no filler putty showing.
The key to the NMF is to have a really good base and if you are wanting it shiney use a gloss black and mist it on in REALLY thin coats. Almost to the point of not being able to see them, then baam it will eventually just look like metal.
Shot the first coat of Aluminum ALC101 tonight. I can’t stress light coats of paint enough. I’m somewhat stunned at how much paint gets used. I’m going to do some research tonight and see if I’m doing something wrong. It used about a half a bottle for a couple of light coats on a 1/48 scale Tamiya P-51D.
Reasoned… Yeah I was thinking the same thing on the B29 and B17 kits I wanted to do in Alclad. At 7.99 for 1oz it can get expensive. I’m guessing its going to take 7 oz’s on the B17 and 10 oz’s on the B29. That’s an expensive paint job.
Their grey micro filler primer is wonderful. I use it for all my priming needs. It does work best at high pressure though. I usually go about 20 psi in my Omni 4000. I recently discovered their gloss coat which is good too. Goes down nice and smooth and your ready for decals in a few hours. Forget Future.
i have heard their black primer is terrible but I have no experience with it.
I found the same thing about the amount used being relatively high. I used just under 1/2 bottle on a 1/72 P-47, granted I am still learning this stuff but geez it can add up fast! Here in South Africa there is only one mail order place you can get it from aswell to add to the costs but it is like no other finish I have ever seen, so you are basically screwed either way LOL!
On my P-47 I did not use any primer, I sprayed gloss Tamiya enamel, wasn’t happy with that ,sanded it and then sprayed matt black with a future gloss coat over that. The Alclad pollished allu went over that very nicely and gave a high gloss look to it.
The only hassle I had was that the alclad came off in a few places where removed the masking (could have been to tacky) and I also rubbed the alclad off in places like the leading edges of the wings and around the cockpit where I handled the model allot…will not make that mistake again!
As for the decals over the alclad, my Academy decals went on briliantly without any solutions or silvering, I was very surprized with the result.
Here is the P-47 I did, maybe I could get the shine higher if I didn’t handle it with bare hands next time.
It does seem to be one of the more tricky paints to use…
