Issues regarding metallic finishes with floquil silver paints

[Bzzymatt]

Hey, so I'm a little concerned about my metallic finish with my P-51 mustang. I haven't painted it yet, but I'm almost ready to paint it.

The issue is that I have been told to apply a coat of black and then my floquil silver, but the silver seems to be a little rough and not as realistic as I wanted it to be.

It seems to be perfect when I apply it straight onto the plastic, however it looked as if it was rubbing off the plastic when I touched it after it had time to dry, but I don't know what is going on???? I'm still trying to come up with new ways to make metallic finishes.

The tamiya silver in a spray can doesn't seem to work for me either,so I guess floquil is the better way to go from this point because that is all I have and that is all I can afford right now.

Please help!!!!!

Matthew

 

[TiM]

Hi there,

I must say that I'm not familiar with Floquil, so if my comment does not bear out or someone disagrees I'm happy to stand down...

If the silver seems 'rough', could it be that you arn't applying it wet enough - what I mean is that with metallics I've used, both model paints and automotive, the metallic effect is tiny flakes of aluminium and these need to 'lie down' parallel to the surface. If there's not enough paint carrier and time for this to happen they stick up at angles and don't achieve the effect.

The difficulty is that achieving enough paint thickness for the metallic flakes to do the above often causes runs as the paint is 'heavy' - the metal bits arn't soluble obviously and can clump under gravity.

One last thing, the better the paint quality the finer the aluminium metallic flakes and better finish I've got. Best model paint I've used is the Vallejo metallics in alcohol, although the specialist stuff like Alclad II gets very good reviews- not had an excuse to try one of those yet myself ;D