Alclad , coverage?

[yak face]

Hi all , just a quick one , How do you find alclad for coverage? The reason i'm asking is that i got a bottle of airframe aluminium for my tu 22 blinder, having read that it goes a long way i thought i would be fine . I used a white primer as i wanted to mask off various panels to be left white and the paint on these aircraft is a very light silver , so i reckoned it would be ok . The trouble i had was the coverage, i had given the 2 elevators several coats , enough to give a good colour , but it took half the bottle ! Is it just me? am i using too high a pressure? (about 20 psi) or do you think its the white undercoat ?Or is this rate of coverage normal? What i ended up doing was thinking -what is alclad? A highly thinned cellulose laquer applied by airbrush . So i thought i would try a little experiment and got an aerosol of silver paint and decanted some into a jar using a drinking straw. I then thinned this about 50 % with cellulose thinners, and tried it on a piece of scrap. It sprayed the same as alclad but with better opacity and coverage and once dry ( very quickly -just like alclad) it seemed to be very resistant to rubbing off or coming off when masking tape was applied and pulled off. I ended up spraying the whole model with this mixture and it turned out fine . Maybe ill just use this method for silver finishes in future. Heres the stuff i used and the painted model

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[Ian M]

Hmm. I have sprayed about four 1/48 scale in Alclad and have a good half bottle left.

I think 20 psi is way to high. I use about ten. I'm 170km from home so can't check it out right now.

Ian M

 

[stona]

I spray at about 15psi for Alclad. I wouldn't say that it goes a long way! I seem to get through it at a fair rate.

Cheers

Steve

 

[m1ks]

I think it depends on how you're using it.

When used as intended for the high polished effects like chrome, it goes a long long way, if used as a paint, it will be used up as quickly as a paint, one bottle after all is only like a tamiya pot of paint for example, just lots more expensive when used as paint rather than to dust a glossed surface.

 

[yak face]

Thanks for the replies guys, i think your observations seem to point to the conclusion that the rate of coverage is about normal but was probably made far worse because of the white undercoat. I'll not give up hope on the stuff yet , next time i have a go i'll be using a grey or black undercoat so we'll see how it goes then. As for the alternative using the car aerosol , i reckon that was a great success , i'll definitely be using that method again! cheers tony