Friday, December 12, 2014

WIP: Nemesis Dreadknight pt4- Premature Chip-ulation


A little more progress on the Dreadknight since Monday and experiments with a new product.  Good news and bad news.

I'm finally moving past the base metallics and couldn't be happier to get moving. First step was to finish off the secondary metals so I could finally get my airbrushes back to their happy place, devoid of metallic clogging.  I hit all the gold parts with a mix of Vallejo Old Gold and Bronze. As I've mentioned before, their Old Gold standard paint is not even remotely a close match to their Old Gold Alcohol Metallic- a color I really like. I've been trying to find a mix that will get me close. This was not it.

Next I did a few remaining parts in GW Copper.  All the metallics got a good dose of medium mixed in to work in the airbrush.  At least the copper looks correct.  I think I'm officially moving to NMM on my golds.  Enough with this crap. I need to practice my blending anyway.


Next step was the one I was really excited about. I bought some MIG Chipping Medium and have been dying to try it out. I did a quick sealer coat with Vallejo Satin Varnish over the armor pieces to lock in the base metallic. That went on fine. Then after a little drying time I sprayed a good dose of the Chipping Medium on. Now, I watched several YouTube videos on this stuff and the consensus was to give it a good half hour to dry and then move on to your next color. That didn't work out so well for me.

Crack City!

Not all, but a lot of the parts ended up with some good cracking in this base coat. Now, my intent is to beat this stuff up, but I was hoping I would be the one in control of when and where the chipping would occur. *sigh* I think I'm just going to continue the experiment forward from here. Worst case I'll have to strip the parts and start over, so what's the harm in seeing where it goes. This was just supposed to be the undercoat, and a lot of this will get a red coat over it. We'll see what happens and call this a learning trial. I could still end up OK, right?

So what happened? I've certainly had this problem with parts that weren't clean, but that's not really the issue here. It's some kind of chemical issue. Did I not wait long enough for the drying and it hadn't properly cured? Pretty humid now- that can affect things. This was before I gave the brushes a good cleaning, so metallic residue could be to blame. I've also been putting some Airbrush medium in with my GW and Vallejo paint instead of water to thin and that could do it too. Would be good to know so I don't hit this issue again but there's just too many possibilities to know for sure right now.

Oh well, considering the number of new things I've tried lately, I've had pretty good luck with it all working out. As potential screw ups go, this wouldn't be too big an issue to clean up.

Anyone else had experience with this?

~Deet


1 comment:

  1. I always get cracking when the temp/humidity isn't perfect...but it looks like you have a booth here, so that shouldn't be an issue. Maybe it's supposed to be really thin coats? I've never used the stuff.

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