I’m a first time user of ALCLAD II Polished Aluminum Laquer.
The stuff is terriffic. Goes on easily, looks great. There is a small fly in the paint so to speak. On their website, the ALCLAD folks state that Polished Aluminum does not react well with decals solvents/setting agents. Memory seems to say that members of this forum have complained about decal films on bare metal paint.
Has anyone out there used Alclad II Polished Aluminum and then tried decal it?, seal it (with say gloss coat, future, etc) What kind of results did you get?
I am concerned that sealing the paint will change its qualities (perhaps dramatically) and equally concerned that failing to do so will cause real problems with decals.
I have worked hard on this model, on would like its finish to be of the highest quality.
I used a coat of Future before doing anything else, and found to my great relief that its effects on the reflectivity of Polished Aluminum were marginal at worst. There was a minor loss of reflection, perhaps 5 to 10 percent. This was more than compensated for in the gains that followed:
The paint lost its tackiness.
The paint is now ready for decal application, followed by another coat of future to seal them.
Yeah, I’d really like to know too - for sealing decals on an Alclad polished aluminum finish, can one spray the Future straight from the bottle? If not, what should one mix in and how much?
I’ve applied decals directly on top of the Alclad polished aluminum using Micro Sol/Set without any problems associated with pulled paint. I do understand that there should be a gloss coat applied over the decals/paint prior to conducting any weathering operations.