Chips and scratches
With Mike McDougall
I recently bought a batch of Mr Color solvent based paint. I went straight for the colours and paint suggested by eduard. On receipt however I realised that chipping the solvent based paint might prove awkward. These days I try to gently and subtly weather things and I couldn’t find an answer on the internet as to whether this might be possible.
Anyway I decided to experiment, so out came the old 109 test bed. I elected to test Tamiya acrylic and Mr Color solvent paint over hairspray and Vallejo Chipping Medium (VCM).
The process
Both wings were undercoated with Mr Color Chromate Yellow
The port wing was coated with Silvikrin Extreme Hold hairspray (nicked from the wife’s stock. I don’t use it myself!) and the starboard wing with Vallejo VCM chipping medium. I had never tried the hairspray (HS) route before.
Both coats were quite liberal. Two passes of hairspray making the wing quite wet, likewise with chipping medium.
Top coats. The inboard port and starboard wings were sprayed with Mr Color 117 RLM76 (I should have gone for a darker colour over the chromate yellow)
The outboard port and starboard wings were sprayed with Tamiya acrylic Ocean Grey
Then some fairly agricultural chipping with water and a toothpick, using the side of the stick and the point.
Results
Mr Color over VCM; I like the depth of the chips, although I felt less in control of the effect.
Mr Color over hairspray, some really aggressive isolated chips. Also looking at the results under a magnifying glass, the chips have a real edge to them. As chips they are quite realistic but probably out of scale for 1:48 … too deep and too large.
Tamiya on VCM. Probably the option I would choose, I have used this before successfully.
Tamiya on hairspray. Again some chips with depth, although they are most likely OK for 1:48 scale.
Conclusion
Lord knows. But you can chip Mr Color… and I think I prefer the Chipping Medium. I feel most comfortable with it as a process, and should probably stick to water based paint in future. I dare say you have your own methods.. but it was an amusing experiment. Mike M.