Brush 'n Leaf: silver leaf paint

[steelpillow 935]

Recently acquired a bottle of this stuff. Does anybody know how to get a good smooth, shiny finish with it?

Strictly a brush-on finish: "NOT FOR SPRAY APPLICATION".

Tried it neat, it comes up shiny silver but shows ribbing along the brush strokes. Thinned a bit, it settles nice and smooth but loses its high shine.

Any ideas?

[skwonk 9,255]

Never heard of it but I would dry a stiff dry brush then soft cloth buffing.

[Mad Steve 23,561]

What are you using it for? 

[steelpillow 935]

47 minutes ago, Mad Steve said:

What are you using it for? 

Polished aluminium. Brand new, smooth as a baby's bottom but polished for speed. 1:72 scale so the shine can be reduced a bit, but not much. It's the centre-section joining bits for my Twinfang whiff.

The alternative is to undercoat gloss black and topcoat a Humbrol silver, which has worked well for me in the past but obviously involves more faffing.

[Mad Steve 23,561]

Well to be honest, I would go with the Humbrol Silver route.

My wife has used the Brush N Leaf stuff in the past on Doll House goodies and gave up in the end and asked me to airbrush them instead. She said even tho it's supposed to be brushpainted, it doesn't go on very well, difficult to get out all the brush marks. 

If I may offer another possible solution, if you want shiny silver out the tin in one shot, try Tamiya LP48 Sparkling Silver. Forget the sparking part, it's an excellent shiny plane colour 

 

[steelpillow 935]

3 hours ago, skwonk said:

Never heard of it but I would dry a stiff dry brush then soft cloth buffing.

Buffing the shiny-with-brushmarks sample just dulled down the ridges, a cool stripy effect but not very aeroplane-like. Maybe if I let it dry thoroughly that might improve. Buffing the duller but smooth sample makes no noticeable difference. At least it's a hard surface and doesn't rub off.

[steelpillow 935]

This is getting interesting. Tried a couple of variations - thinned only a little, and thinned instead with cellulose thinners.

Only slight thinning caused minimal dulling, and smoothed the brush ridges a fair bit: almost usable. Cellulose also preserved the shine, but did not level it out as well as proper thinners, leaving slight ridges much like the aforesaid. Maybe I should try both together....

Edited May 1 by steelpillow

[steelpillow 935]

Tried more variations on thinners-es. Bottom line seems to be that enough to actually thin out and collapse the ridges is also enough to dull the finish. Maybe there's a sweet spot with another variation on thinners/flow-improver/retardant, but I've had enough.

This gloop must be great for small-scale Excaliburs, aluminised fabric space suits, pools of liquid mercury and whatever, but for polished aircraft skins I don't think so.

It's shiny black stuff time....

[Paul Brown 9,066]

This is a wild guess, but as I understand it Brush 'n Leaf has large metal flakes in it, if you thin it you're likely reducing the surface area therefore reducing the effect. Mrs B uses waxy metal effect stuff on her crafting projects, but it's applied with make-up type pads not a brush, I think they might be similar to AK True Metal that comes in tubes. They might be an alternative to using an airbrush, but to be honest if you have an airbrush there's loads of metallisers to choose from these days.