“Sir D” (disastermaster) uses the salt technique for his armor and I liked his results so I’m planning to try it on my Jimmy or Panther. I just read the article in FSM July, 2003 to get more information. The technique says to spray the model with a base coat, then apply the salt, then paint with the the color coat…remove salt. After the salt is removed the “chipped” color coat reveals the base color below. Sounds easy to me!
My question: Has anybody used multiple layering of this technique? I would like to replicate chips starting from the metal, to the primer, various shades of the base color and so on. I expect I will need to apply the salt in varying amounts to make this look right…again, sounds easy to me…Anybody tried this before??? Any pitfalls I should watch out for.
I’ll be using acrylic paints and standard oil washes.
And, from an “old salt”, you can use fine sand for better results.
Map out the colors and salt/sand 'em, then paint over with one coat. After the media is removed, the “chipped” color coat reveals the “multicolor” base colors below. Saves time and confusion. Also, you can combine this with additional top coats for a more complex effect.
I never ventured an attempt at this method because of fear of what the salt would do to the paint down the road–salt is so reactive and corrosive that I didn’t want to chance having something that I couldn’t control–but using sand sounds like a real viable alternative!?
doog/ Sir D: The March, 2008 FSM “reader tips” mentions sand too…that is what reminded me about the salt technique. I think I’ll test it on a piece of sheet styrene to see if I like it…I don’t want to “lebende n lernen” on a good kit. I’ll let you know how it goes.
[;)] The downside of the the salt technique is that it will leach out and [yuck] leave a white-ish stain if you aren’t very careful in the way it is applied. Less is more.[BH] To much water will mush the salt.
Since a little water is necessary to fix the salt, some of that salt will delute, then crystalize.
Some these salt crystals are tiny, difficult to see, but they have to get cleaned out throughly.
The method work well with lacquer paint (e.g Mr.Color). Since lacquer paint doesn’t react to water and the model could be soaked in water to get rid of remaining salt fragments.
Of all the chipping methods I’ve tried, this was probably most difficult to control.