How to spray A-Stand lacquers from AMMO

Airbrushing Metallic Finishes

With Geoff Coughlin (January 2025)

We have so much choice these days when it comes to painting metallic finishes and these relatively new A-Stand metallic lacquer ‘paints’ look to be very good. They are similar to Alclad lacquers in terms of performance and how you apply them and so if you have experience of using Alclad, then go right ahead and treat these A-Stand lacquers in the same way.

The range is now extensive from A-Stand and so you can get pretty much any useful colour from dark shades like Exhaust and Magnesium through to bright Chrome.

The finish they give will of course vary, depending on what you want in terms of look. In simple terms, if you want a more natural metal, shinier finish then apply the lacquers over a gloss black base, such as Tamiya Gloss Black (X-1) and use something like White Aluminium from the range.

If, on the other hand, you want a more subdued look such as aluminium, or, High Speed Silver, I find it best to spray over a grey primer, such as AK Grey Primer and Microfiller. This is what I have done in the following demo where you can see me applying A-Stand Aluminium over the grey primer base.

A-Stand lacquers are formulated to be for airbrush use only and arena’t suitable for hand-painting.

Target build: Airfix 1:72 Gloster Meteor F.8
Pressure: 17-20psi (works well for me)

Here’s a look at a finished wing section…

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VIDEO DEMOS

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And here are a couple of photos showing the completed project…

Remember

When the lacquer is fully dry (I always leave the model to dry overnight, even though it is touch-dry very quickly), I always buff it with a clean soft tissue. This removes any slightly rough texture to the metallic surface and any excess pigment and should mean the finish is good to apply decals directly onto without the need to use any gloss varnish.

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VIDEO DEMO

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The finished model pics you see above have no varnish at all applied as the excellent Cartograf decals included in the Airfix kit dried with a very realistic slight satin sheen that blends in well with the surrounding aluminium finish.

If you apply your decals and they seem a bit glossy, they apply a very light satin clear varnish just over the decals.

Good luck!
Geoff C.