Paint and so...

Alclad, not really paint...

This appeared in Modelspoormagazine 72. More text and pictures can be found there...

I needed copper-coloured objects, and using metal and milling them would have been a huge effort. While searching for a suitable paint, I discovered Alclad, a metallic emulsion, ready for airbrushing.

I wanted nice-looking copper boilers and tubes for my brewery's interior. As I needed different odd-shaped formes, using different materials and painting them afterwards seemed the best option. In searching for suitable paint, a friend, who builds military models, suggested me to use Alclad.
This "paint" is in fact a metal particle emulsion, that can be polished after airbrushing. The effect is a convincing metalic "shine". The surface should be as smooth as possible, and after using it (too late to try it for myself) I learned that a black surface under the Alclad finish would give even better results.

I used grey Alclad II primer and copper-coloured ALC110. The brewer's boiler shown left is ready for its first layer. It should be obvious that milling such a shape is very hard to do. I assembled it from a milled hardwood core and added styrene strip details.

Next the primer can be airbrushed, preferably using two thin layers. Pitts or bumps might appear after the first layer and can still be corrected then. The Alclad itself can be airbrushed using several light coats. As it dries quite fast, I was able to apply four coatings in a relatively short period. I used my Dremel to polish the paint after the last layer of Alclad.

The tubing was made from styrene and bent to shape. The joints were made from pieces of shrinking tube. The assembled tube hardly needed any sanding, so the primer and alclad layers could be applied easily. The tap handle was etched. The finished result was quite nice: the light reflections give a terrific athosphere to the brewery's interior.