The great chipping experiment begins. First things first. The decals turned out reasonably well, the Sol/Set had no effects on either the paint or the varnish and as a nice bonus, the Sol worked over Vallejos decal medium without any problems. That is, I had sealed the decal completely with Vallejo, then applied Sol. Back to the chipping. Here's what we'll be using:
Instructions for using this stuff are a little thin on the ground. I had asked Vallejo on their facebook page and couldn't get a more detailed answer than: brush it on, let dry and paint over it. Okey dokey. I brushed some medium on 2/3 of the hull, I wanted a section without anything on it to see what happens without the medium, and let dry for about 10-15 minutes. I brushed on some Greenbrown and Khaki Grey (just checking colours). The first thing I noticed was that since the medium reacts with water, brushing on thinned paint is a little tricky. The paint tends to gunk up if you try more than one pass. Not a promising start.
On to the actual chipping, I used a soft stipple brush, a harder stipple brush, regular brush, toothpick and a sponge.
I forgot to take pictures at each stage so the pics below are after chipping with a fresh paint layer down the middle and a second coat applied to a chipped area on the lower middle section.
The back end had no medium.
The quick conclusion is that more testing is needed. I found that a moist soft stipple brush, or a moistened sponge gave the most controllable effects for heavy wear, and a moistened toothpick (or a coat of water, then toothpick) was actually the best for precision work. Interestingly, the untreated section worked quite well, again, moistened soft stipple and toothpick were best. I found trying to chip directly with the toothpick was digging into the bottom layer and exposing bare plastic. The more water you use, the greater the wear effect is. Most of the ridges of gunk disappear afterwards so even if the paint layer looks like crap, it will tone down reasonably well. It does look like a coat of flat might be necessary, although the washed out paint dulls down most of the shine.
I'm letting the whole thing dry overnight and will attack it again to see if drying times make any difference to reactions. Then will wash the whole thing, and repeat the painting/chipping process, again to see if this has any affect or not.
Kimmo
