Hi All,

I have only recently started to do the chipping technique. I have found it worked well with Tamiya Acrylic used as both the bottom coat, and the top coat for the chipping. I am considering using Model Master Acrylic as the top coat over a bottom coat of Tamiya Acrylic. Does anyone have any experience with using Model Master Acrylic for this? I haven't ever really been happy with the Model Master Acrylic paint. It does seem to airbrush well, but there is something about it that just doesn't work as well, for me, as Tamiya. I would like to use the Model Master for a particular color, though, and wonder if anyone has any experience with using it as the top coat for chipping, and whether you would recommend any particular method to make chipping with this paint work its best. Thanks!

Curt, try it on a scrap piece and test for what it takes to screw up. It should work as well as Tamiya so push the limits a little to see where the fail point is. Then you will be comfortable when it comes time to do it on the kit.

Thanks, Greg. As it happens, I just decided to go for it. It was the bottom of my M1A1 Abrams, anyway. I wanted the bottom to look really scratched up. I had laid down a layer of Tamiya, about 50-50 Chrome Silver/Dark Grey as the base coat. I let that dry overnight, then coated that with a layer of clear satin. After letting that dry a short while, I did a layer of AK Heavy Chipping fluid, then, after about 15 minutes, did a coat of Model Master Acrylic Sand color. within about 10 minutes, I started the chipping. Even with only that short of a time, the sand layer was on there really 'good', that is, hard to get off, but I saturated that layer with a lot of water, and used a toothpick, hard, and those scratches ended up being perfect, at least as far as I had envisioned it. When I had used Tamiya as the top coat, the top layer came off a lot easier, and probably makes for smaller, more subtle scratches, if that's your goal, but the larger chunks that happened with today's experiment were perfect for what I wanted!