"Metal" paint

[Carlo]

Hi, all-a-yooz,

I seek information and advice from this august body. I am trying to find a good-great paint to use to represent metal (iron, aluminuium, chrome, etc.) finish on plastics and resins. Last I looked, there was "rub-n-buff" and little else. Since that was ages ago, I'm wondering what's being used now, and what is best. Can someone tell me, or give advice?

Thanks, Carlo

[Lawrence@NZFinescale]

Hi, all-a-yooz,

I seek information and advice from this august body. I am trying to find a good-great paint to use to represent metal (iron, aluminuium, chrome, etc.) finish on plastics and resins. Last I looked, there was "rub-n-buff" and little else. Since that was ages ago, I'm wondering what's being used now, and what is best. Can someone tell me, or give advice?

Thanks, Carlo

There are a whole bunch of approaches that work to varying degrees, depending on what object/surface you are painting and what effect you are after.

Some I've played with:
Real metal foil
Humbrol metalcote (after buffing)
Uschi steel
soft pencil/graphite
Molowtow chrome
Rub n Buff
Various Alclad systems (which I haven't used personally)

YouTube is my go to for effects these days.

[Bill Gill]

I don't have much experience with using finishes that look like metal.
Here's a little I can offer:
Like Lawrence listed above, a soft graphite pencil can create a look like iron or steel, especially in places like handrails or edges where the paint gets worn away and the bare metal has a soft polished look..

I've seen spray paints in hardware stores that are supposed to look like chrome, polished gold, copper and more. I never used any, but have seen plastic caps on some of the spray cans that have a painted finish that looks like chrome or gold or copper.

I have approximated an old galvanized (zinc) finish by mixing a very light gray (perhaps with a bit of white) and a tiny touch of cobalt blue.

I covered the raised lettering on a sign with 23 karet gold leaf to look like gold leaf. That was after all the metallic gold paints I tried (solvent, acrylic, spray) had tiny metallic flakes that did not look like gold metal.

An old sign painter gave me several small jars of extremely fine metallic particles. The aluminum powder, when mixed into matte varnish looks exactly like aluminum paint.

[Ray Dunakin]

I've had good results with Tester's "Model Master" line of metalizer paints, but unfortunately those have been discontinued. Supposedly the AK brand "Xtreme Metal" paints are fairly good but I haven't tried them yet.

[Peter_T1958]

So, I have to add my two cents worth to this subject! Recently I ordered these AK products (there are even more metal shades) and it looks rather good to me. However, special attention should be devoted to an absolutely perfect surface. That's why I have to remove the paint and fix that. The imperfections are clearly visible in particular on the left lamp reflector.
But I can fully recommend it!