Natural Aluminum Finish

[blueeyedbear]

Hey, Willja,

Back when I was building in plastic, I built a Moonbat. It was a miserable vacuformed kit, but that was the only kit there was. In doing my research, I found photos before and after the two engine fires, and the plane was painted olive drab, above and below. That's a lot easier than aluminum!

Oops, just checked the pix at 1000aircraftphotos.com, and my memory has failed me. It's OD above and gray below.

Bob, the blueeyed bear

[CMDRTED]

Has anyone revisted Mike Krols Gremir site? The P47s by John Griffin are fantastic CAD bare metal finishes. I tried to nudge John into giving up his "secret" but he maintains it was a hit or miss thing. I buy that explanation as I've done several one offs and forgot the formulas. If John can "member" the process that would be my vote for the way to go. No spray finishes, no having to mask areas or other atypical efforts.

[Willja67]

Originally Posted by blueeyedbear

Hey, Willja,

Back when I was building in plastic, I built a Moonbat. It was a miserable vacuformed kit, but that was the only kit there was. In doing my research, I found photos before and after the two engine fires, and the plane was painted olive drab, above and below. That's a lot easier than aluminum!

Oops, just checked the pix at 1000aircraftphotos.com, and my memory has failed me. It's OD above and gray below.

Bob, the blueeyed bear

Bob, I was talking about my next project (XP-67 is now available for sale)
which is the XP-72, basically a re-engined P-47 and the only 2 built were bare aluminum.

[CharlieC]

Originally Posted by CMDRTED

Has anyone revisted Mike Krols Gremir site? The P47s by John Griffin are fantastic CAD bare metal finishes. I tried to nudge John into giving up his "secret" but he maintains it was a hit or miss thing. I buy that explanation as I've done several one offs and forgot the formulas. If John can "member" the process that would be my vote for the way to go. No spray finishes, no having to mask areas or other atypical efforts.

I have a recollection that John used cut up images of bare metal finished aircraft to get the effect of sky and ground reflection right in his P-47s. My memory might be failing but there was a thread in cardmodels.net when John was designing the P-47s about this.

'Silver' P-47D - Page 4 - Zealot Hobby Forum

Regards,

Charlie

[Gil]

Hi Ted,

The aluminum coloring tutorial, mentioned earlier, uses similar techniques that John Griffin used. In fact didn't you test build the his P-47D?

+Gil

[scon10]

Just to put in my 2 cents, I have used the Tamiya X-11 Chrome silver acrylic paint to "silverize" printed card, in most cases copied old 1950's cardmodels. In order to preserve the printed aspect of a cardmodel, I needed to use the paint in an old fashioned draughting pen (where the lower beak can be rotated to clean the thing) and draw around all printed lines and areas, that I didn't want to be covered with paint. Here is just a small example, a Super Constellation build from a 1953 Dutch cardmodel in scale 1 : 66 2/3 (yes, strange scale). It does take some patience to draw along tiny details like the registration letters on the nose wheel doors for example. When thorougly dry, I coated the model in acylic parquet lacquer
greetings.

[ringmaster]

If you want to go the metal foil route, The higher price chocolate bars come in very thin foils, several color and often flat finish in back. If you can't find MicroScale foil adhesive, the sizing for goldleaf will work, art stores or sign shops.

[silveroxide]

I am new here coming in from another Paper modeling site. Now as for metal surfaces, When use the schematics/plans for my model, I go over the lines with a dull pencil or ball point pen to engrave the lines on the sheet. Be careful on scribing the lines, you do not want to cut through. I use regular aluminum foil paper. I cut a sheet about paper size and I spray adhesive to the back. It becomes real tacky to the touch so cut it carefully before sticking it to the plans. With my fingers, I work out to get the bubbles out and with my finger nail I go over the scribed lines to get the panel look.

One thing about household aluminum paper, is that it has a shiny and dull side. Alternate the pattern to get an interesting look.

[Gil]

Thanks to all who have posted their prior art and ideas. As many of you already know and many might suspect obtaining an aluminum finish on a paper model is an elusive objective at best. I won't say that a solution is near at hand but it is now (grudgingly) a little closer (that's an opinion of course).

As usual many assumptions have fallen by the wayside. I now realize how bumpy paper really is. Adhere a reflective aluminum sheet and voila! an instant device for visualizing bumpiness (lumpiness?). I will never look at another piece of card stock without holding it to the light to check the surface texture. The effect of water on paper becomes really spectacular when trying to combine aluminum with it. These are just a couple of highlights from this ongoing investigation and I am sure there will be more to follow.

Below is a photo of the work area where the experiments are being made. Photographing aluminum sheet is part of the ongoing enigma of this material. It doesn't.

I've found that using engraving / embossing techniques with the right tools is proving to be a useful avenue of research. The sheet in the middle is an overworked and practically disintegrating first off success of this technique.

The second photo is a render of three conic sections. This is an experiment to use Trompe l'Oeil (fool the eye) techniques to "print" the effect on paper. I'll use the end point color values in Photoshop to create a gradient effect layer and see how it works (side by side comparison). This work has given me several other ideas to further refine this method.

+Gil

[Don Boose]

Hooray! Gil at work on another innovative set of experiments from which we will all benefit. Many thanks for the fascinating shot of the Natural Aluminum Finish Proving Ground and for the very clear explanation of your trials.

Don