Is this an alternative to hair spray? Cheers

Yes Tat. The Vallejo Chipping Medium works pretty much the same as Hairspray for giving a worn chipped effect. Depending on how much Medium is applied along with how wet you make the surface afterwards, effects the end result.

Thick coat of medium results in more surface area being removed. Less will reduce how easy the top coat of paint comes off.

Similarly, a wet brush will undermine the top coat more allowing more surface paint to be removed while a damp brush will allow you to control the removal a bit more.

Both of these work, more or less, hand in hand.

I had issues with hairspray and vallejo paints...the paint "crazed" drying over the top of it, ruining the Fennik I was working on.

If you scroll down to near the bottom of the link below, you'll find my first use results and a few experiments.

Kimmo

http://armorama.com/forums/212564&ord=&page=6

Thanks all! -- Greatly appreciate your feedback / experience. Kimmo, you mention of thinnning the medium -- I take it that you use water for this?

Cheers,

Tat

Yep, just water. To be honest, It seemed to work best after applying and then washing, slightly more control. The stuff was designed for heavy wear rather than fine chipping so some experimentation is needed. And I suspect airbrushing would work better than brush painting as any water you would use for thinning (if using acrylics) activates the medium somewhat. I'll need to do a whitewashed tank one of these days and test it some more.

Kimmo

Noted with thanks Kimmo!

Hey Scott, this happens when too much HS/chipping fluid is applied and the top layer paint hits it too wet causing an instant reaction of sorts as it dries, which can result in the crackling/glazing effect.

It's not directly a HS issue, rather a quantity issue during application. It happens just the same with the chipping fluids when too much is applied.

Solutions are to apply even and lighter coverage of the HS/CF (hold the aerosol can farther away and move it over the model quicker to avoid heavy applications) and painting from an adjusted distance, maybe an inch farther away than your normal on the first pass, and possibly even lower psi. HTH