Being a newbie to the bare metal finishing of plastic models, I brought a Testors Aluminium paint spray can from the hobby store and sprayed it on. After letting it dry overnight, I still can see paint powder sticking to my fingers when i touch it - Since ive got a lot more handling to do to the model, is there a way to seal that paint so that it doesnt stick to my hand? The only idea i can come up with is to tape a paper cutout on the painted areas so that my fingers dont mess up the finish. Any advice would be welcome. Thanks.
When i touch the painted surface during handling of the plane, a small amount of silver paint/powder sticks to my finger. Also a slight fingerprint like impression is left on the painted surface. Was just worried about this.
What you are seeing - the powder - could be "overspray". It's caused by particles of paint drying before they contact the surface, generally caused by holding the spray head too far from the surface. Your fingers (or more to the point, the oil in your fingers) can also cause the metal particles in the paint to tarnish more rapidly. This is a normal reaction of a metallic surface to your body chemistry.
What you can do is lightly scrub/polish the painted surface with Scotchbrite after it has cured. This does two things - 1) it will level and/or remove any overspray particulate; and 2) it's also a good way to remove fingerprint tarnish.
It sounds like you waited long enough for the paint to cure - if it did not seem that way, then either your coat was too heavy or there was a significant amount of overspray to leave your fingerprint in. Metallic spray paints (and the Testors Metallizer line in particular) are usually thin laquers. They don't need to be applied very heavy to cover well. The Scotchbrite polishing technique I mentioned works VERY well with Testors Metallizers, providing you spray them directly onto bare plastic
- this allows the lacquer to "bite" into the plastic and pick up the effort of your polishing once cured.
I have yet to find a sealer which does not dull the metallic sheen of the basecoat, but some like Future.
Sounds like you either have too much paint on the model or held the paint source too far from the model and a lot of paint fell as semi-dry dust on the model. (The paint dried in the air.)
I would try buffing it with a piece of soft material. I use an old worn out Tee shirt but any soft cloth would work. Most NM finishes don't take well to masking tape. If you want a good NM finish try either SnJ or Alclad but I doubt that either is available in a spray can. NM finishes work best with an airbrush.
You can seal most NM finishes with Future or most other clear or flat finishes but you will lose the metallic sheen.
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