I was wondering, did anyone ever try the hairspray technique, without actually using hairspray?

I was wondering if it's actually the hairspray that does it, or just the warm water?

Reason I ask, I just had a hairspray fiasco - the paint just peeled of - but there was one part on the tank on which I didn't spray hairspray which worked as it should....

I've done the technique many times before and it always worked flawlessly. Don't know what went wrong this time, but it did made me wondering about the actual use of the hairspray...

Dave

Hairspray dries to a solid layer -- which is how it holds hair in place -- but the binder is water-soluble, to allow the hairspray to be washed out of your hair afterward. Paint applied over a layer of hairspray which hasn't been sealed with a topcoat is porous enough that, the water will get down below the layer of paint to the hairspray, partially dissolving it and allowing the scrubbing to break flakes of paint off, creating the chipping effect. The longer hairspray is allowed to set, the stronger it is and the harder it is to get it to loosen up; this is one reason why companies like Mig Productions are producing their own chipping fluid -- to get a more consistent effect when used, rather than making the modeler deal with the vagaries of cans of hairspray.

As to why the paint flaked on the areas not covered by hairspray, there are any number of causes for this. When plastic model kits are molded, the molds are sprayed with a mold-release compound to prevent the plastic from sticking to the mold, so they get a clean release without distorted castings; a residue of this release remains on the trees of parts when they're packaged, and the residue can cause adhesion problems when parts are painted. Most guides recommend that you rinse trees in water with a few drops of detergent to remove any lingering release agent. Additionally, your skin exudes oils, which will get on your parts when you handle them, and they can again cause adhesion problems with paint. In most how-to videos, you will see modelers' hands wearing latex or nitrile gloves, or at least fingercots; this is both to keep overspray off your skin and to keep from getting your skin oils on the model by handling it.

Dave- there's a lot of other people out there who have had problems with the HS technique, myself included. The odd time for me it will not work the way it is supposed to. You can use something like AK Interactive Chipping Fluid if you want to ditch the can of hairspray.

However, there are other techniques that produce paint chipping in a similar way- one is to use a masking solution like Maskol- dab it on to the model with a sponge and then, once you have sprayed over it, you can rub it off to reveal chips.

You can use salt aswell- brush water onto the model where you want chipping, then sprinkle fine sea salt over the water. Spray the color then rub the salt off with the aid of some water.

I've also heard of someone using Marmite (Vegemite) spread in a similar fashion- spread it on with a sponge or dab it on with a brush, let it dry, paint over it and then scrub it off.

Hope this helps.

Someone is used to adopting even toothpaste as a masking solution!

Anyway, teorically if you had a well cured base color done with enamels and an over coat done with acrylic paints, you can remove the over layer with thinner withouth damaging the underneath coat.

Indeed, daughter's Matchbox T34:


Also this exhaust pipe / muffler:


... and I have also found that it is possible sometimes just to scrape away the top layer of paint to reveal the primer underneath.

Then there's nail varnish remover. See what a bit of that applied with a cotton bud does to your top layer...

Agree, there are many ways to achiev the same results. Before the hairspray technique era, good results were achieved by simple techniques. For example, one thay I have personally used many times like in the Stug II below is to apply a basecoat of an acriclic paint, in this case Tamiya's. Let dry for 24 hours and then coat with any tone of white enamel, in this case Model Masters. Immediately after, using a piece of cloth or a brush dampened on mineral spirits you start lifting up the enamel layer only as the mineral won't remove the acrilic basecoat. Hope it helps some.