BARE METAL FOIL

[skiny]

HI all. Bare metal foiling.Has anyone ever done it to a whole airplane .Theres loads of videos for BMF on cars and then its only used for small items(bumpers/window sills.)Would anyone know where to find a link for a video for covering large areas .Im thinking of having a go at it on a P51 mustang i have in my stash,and if BMF dosnt look good then i shall just have to resort to a hairy stick.

[Beefy]

I found these couple of articles that explains how to do an entire aircraft, I hope it proves useful to you

http://www.oldmodelkits.com/blog/plasitc-model-kits-how-tos/foiling-plastic-and-resin-model-kits-for-realism-by-ken-friend/

 

http://www.finescale.com/~/media/import/files/pdf/6/7/d/foiledlightning1.pdf

 

http://www.largescaleplanes.com/articles/article.php?aid=2490

[Dazey]

Just to add to the list of links above, here is an example where foil is applied to a model (1/48 scale F-86) and then painted with metal-coloured paints. Not sure if this is a common technique, but the finished product looks great:

 

http://www.geocities.jp/yoyuso/f86/f86e-1.html#bottom

 

Regards,

David

[skiny]

Thanks very much lads,looks like im gona be busy (hair tearin, slapping wife,kicking dog,punching walls.

)Not as easy as it looks but im determined to give it a go when im feeling better.

[MalX]

it'll be flipping hard work to apply, because i'll need it for my Tamiya Knight Hauler truck, because the Chrome sprue joints will show on the exhaust stacks and Petrol tanks..

 

i dont know why they dont mold these parts in one go, or put the sprue joints on the inside

[Lawzer]

There's a guy over on aeroscale doing a b29 - doesn't look like a job for the fainthearted

 

http://aeroscale.co.uk/modules.php?op=modload&name=SquawkBox&file=index&req=viewtopic&topic_id=252119&page=1

 

 

[Coors54]

I did a 1/32 Hasegawa F-86 in Bare Metal foil many years ago, used 4 sheets of foil and if I remember correctly it was two sheets of chrome finish and two of brushed aluminium. Lots of cutting, burnishing and peeling but it got finished and looked pretty good I thought.

Main problems are compound curves and the technique I used was to burnish small areas at a time with a cotton bud, holding the piece up and stretching it as you burnished. If it creased you could gently pull it up and go again but if the crease didn't pull out it was scrap and try again.

Beauty is you cut slightly oversize for each panel then trim once down following the panel lines. The foil also has a grain so putting the same colour on in different directions gives different hues.

I took some pictures but they were on real film (see how long ago it was?) and the prints are somewhere at the bottom of a box.

Seeing Spencer Pollards P-51 build on his blog using the new chrome paint sort of relegates this method but for those without airbrushes it is an alternative to rattle can silver.

 

Dave 

[theplasticsurgeon]

 

4 hours ago, skiny said:

HI all. Bare metal foiling.Has anyone ever done it to a whole airplane .Theres loads of videos for BMF on cars and then its only used for small items(bumpers/window sills.)Would anyone know where to find a link for a video for covering large areas .Im thinking of having a go at it on a P51 mustang i have in my stash,and if BMF dosnt look good then i shall just have to resort to a hairy stick.

 

 

 

 

That would be me then!  Off the top of my head there's:

B-57 Canberra,

 

C-119 Flying Packet,

 

B-24 Liberator,

 

T-6 Texan,

 

EE Lightning

 

and loads of partial bits of models.

Edited February 27, 2017 by theplasticsurgeon
Photos

[Old Man]

I do quite a bit of foiling, Sir. It is laborious, but not really so difficult.

 

It is best to make your own foil, from ordinary kitchen foil, with MicroScale adhesive. This can be aged to get a more weathered/scale appearance.

 

Here is how I do the eggshell aging now, after some years of employing the method.

 

In a medium saucepan (not aluminum) boil the shells of eight to twelve eggs in a couple of cups of water (when I am going to make a batch, we save the shells over a few days, or, if some meal involves many eggs, I will just go ahead and do some foil). Let this boil for a good while, about fifteen minutes. Keep it topped up with fresh water so you have about as much liquid when you take it off the heat as when you started. Pour the liquid into a jar through a strainer, removing the shells. Scrub the pan, there will probably be a bit of tough grey-ish scum above the water line, and it is best got off while fresh. I used simply boil water and shells a while, then add the foil, but it works well with the shells removed. One thing to look out for is a bit of scum on the foil, and this has proved less likely when shells and foil do not commingle in the boil.

 

To prepare foil for boiling, you will want some steel wool, a scissors you don't care about, and a smooth hard surface (I have a piece of tempered glass about a foot square). Cut foil into pieces about six inches square. Two such will be more than ample to cover entirely a single engined model in 1/72; a 1/72 B-17 I did a while back took about two square feet.

 

It is good to make up excess sheets, to have it on hand, and because some might get spoiled. Place the piece on on the hard surface, dull side down, and go over the shiny side with steel wool. Use long, straight strokes. Avoid wrinkles. A hard wrinkle cannot be smoothed out.

 

Pour the liquid from the jar into a frying pan (again, not aluminum). Bring it to a boil. Place a sheet of foil in it, dull (smooth) side down, scratched (once shiny) side up. For just a little discoloration, leave in for about two minutes or so. If left in for six or seven minutes, the foil will get much darker.

 

Take the foil out with tongs, rinse well under cold water, and wash the smooth side then rinse again. Sometimes a scum may form on the sheet (this happened more often when the eggshells were left in), and this will get it off. If it forms, and remains, the scummed foil is useless. Pat dry. Store the sheets so they stay flat (I put them between pages of a large book). The liquid will prove good for about a dozen such squares. The discoloration has a brownish tinge when pronounced.

 

I use MicroScale adhesive. I have read adhesive for gold leaf can be used as well, but have not tried it. Place the foil on your hard, smooth surface, dull (smooth) side down. Tape in place, stretching it as you do (a bit of tape on opposite side, then opposite corners, like stretching artists canvas). Sometimes I repeat the steel wool here --- if you do, dust to be sure all fragments of steel wool are gone. I apply the adhesive with a cotton bud. Cover evenly but not too thick. It shows cloudy, and dries clear.

 

Once clear, you can cut and apply.

 

Since you can't see the surface that will be showing, variations in the discoloration can ambush you. One thing I mean to try, and will next time I make up a batch, will be to see if, once the adhesive is dry, the sticky side can be placed on wax paper and so stored with backing. I suspect this can be done, and if so, it will be possible to cut pieces with scissors, looking at the surface that will be showing.

 

I will mention another method of aging foil, that I have used only once. I have seen others get good results with it. You put copper. lead, and foil in a large jar, cover with laundry bleach (chlorine bleach(, and close. After a while you open it and take out the foil. What happens is some lead plates onto the aluminum surface, and some aluminum is leached off into the bleach. The discoloration has a bluish tinge. I do not know how long is right, I do know that too long puts pinholes in the foil.

 

Cut out pieces, put them on, press down with Q-tip and round tooth-pick, always trim at panel lines. You will want a new blade, the sharper the better.

Past this, it is just practice.

Get cheap foil if you can; thinner is better, more flexible.

CA accelerator does a good job of cleaning the adhesive, so if you do find you need to take a piece up, that stuff on a bit of paper towel will get any remaining glue up, and won't harm adhesion of adjacent pieces.

Sometimes you have to cut pieces to rough shape (where nacelles fitting to the airfoil of wings being a prime example) before putting them on.

Start in the center of a piece and work out, or at one side and work across, when burnishing down, helps avoid wrinkles. You can usually get a wrinkle flat by moving a tooth-pick along the crest, so to speak.

The good thing about making your own foil is that it is cheap, and you don't have to worry about being caught short --- there's always more where that came from.

 

Here are few pictures of the results, all in 1/72....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[skiny]

On 27/02/2017 at 10:41 PM, Old Man said:

I do quite a bit of foiling, Sir. It is laborious, but not really so difficult.

 

It is best to make your own foil, from ordinary kitchen foil, with MicroScale adhesive. This can be aged to get a more weathered/scale appearance.

 

Here is how I do the eggshell aging now, after some years of employing the method.

 

In a medium saucepan (not aluminum) boil the shells of eight to twelve eggs in a couple of cups of water (when I am going to make a batch, we save the shells over a few days, or, if some meal involves many eggs, I will just go ahead and do some foil). Let this boil for a good while, about fifteen minutes. Keep it topped up with fresh water so you have about as much liquid when you take it off the heat as when you started. Pour the liquid into a jar through a strainer, removing the shells. Scrub the pan, there will probably be a bit of tough grey-ish scum above the water line, and it is best got off while fresh. I used simply boil water and shells a while, then add the foil, but it works well with the shells removed. One thing to look out for is a bit of scum on the foil, and this has proved less likely when shells and foil do not commingle in the boil.

 

To prepare foil for boiling, you will want some steel wool, a scissors you don't care about, and a smooth hard surface (I have a piece of tempered glass about a foot square). Cut foil into pieces about six inches square. Two such will be more than ample to cover entirely a single engined model in 1/72; a 1/72 B-17 I did a while back took about two square feet.

 

It is good to make up excess sheets, to have it on hand, and because some might get spoiled. Place the piece on on the hard surface, dull side down, and go over the shiny side with steel wool. Use long, straight strokes. Avoid wrinkles. A hard wrinkle cannot be smoothed out.

 

Pour the liquid from the jar into a frying pan (again, not aluminum). Bring it to a boil. Place a sheet of foil in it, dull (smooth) side down, scratched (once shiny) side up. For just a little discoloration, leave in for about two minutes or so. If left in for six or seven minutes, the foil will get much darker.

 

Take the foil out with tongs, rinse well under cold water, and wash the smooth side then rinse again. Sometimes a scum may form on the sheet (this happened more often when the eggshells were left in), and this will get it off. If it forms, and remains, the scummed foil is useless. Pat dry. Store the sheets so they stay flat (I put them between pages of a large book). The liquid will prove good for about a dozen such squares. The discoloration has a brownish tinge when pronounced.

 

I use MicroScale adhesive. I have read adhesive for gold leaf can be used as well, but have not tried it. Place the foil on your hard, smooth surface, dull (smooth) side down. Tape in place, stretching it as you do (a bit of tape on opposite side, then opposite corners, like stretching artists canvas). Sometimes I repeat the steel wool here --- if you do, dust to be sure all fragments of steel wool are gone. I apply the adhesive with a cotton bud. Cover evenly but not too thick. It shows cloudy, and dries clear.

 

Once clear, you can cut and apply.

 

Since you can't see the surface that will be showing, variations in the discoloration can ambush you. One thing I mean to try, and will next time I make up a batch, will be to see if, once the adhesive is dry, the sticky side can be placed on wax paper and so stored with backing. I suspect this can be done, and if so, it will be possible to cut pieces with scissors, looking at the surface that will be showing.

 

I will mention another method of aging foil, that I have used only once. I have seen others get good results with it. You put copper. lead, and foil in a large jar, cover with laundry bleach (chlorine bleach(, and close. After a while you open it and take out the foil. What happens is some lead plates onto the aluminum surface, and some aluminum is leached off into the bleach. The discoloration has a bluish tinge. I do not know how long is right, I do know that too long puts pinholes in the foil.

 

Cut out pieces, put them on, press down with Q-tip and round tooth-pick, always trim at panel lines. You will want a new blade, the sharper the better.

Past this, it is just practice.

Get cheap foil if you can; thinner is better, more flexible.

CA accelerator does a good job of cleaning the adhesive, so if you do find you need to take a piece up, that stuff on a bit of paper towel will get any remaining glue up, and won't harm adhesion of adjacent pieces.

Sometimes you have to cut pieces to rough shape (where nacelles fitting to the airfoil of wings being a prime example) before putting them on.

Start in the center of a piece and work out, or at one side and work across, when burnishing down, helps avoid wrinkles. You can usually get a wrinkle flat by moving a tooth-pick along the crest, so to speak.

The good thing about making your own foil is that it is cheap, and you don't have to worry about being caught short --- there's always more where that came from.

 

Here are few pictures of the results, all in 1/72....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wow, i thought for a moment i was getting a cookery lesson.Sounds messy but the results you have speak for themselves. very good and i hope when im better and get round to it i will endevour to try and be good as yourself.Question ,do you have to "age" the foil before hand or can it be done by brush afterwards as normal modeling ???

 

[skiny]

On 27/02/2017 at 5:51 PM, theplasticsurgeon said:

 

That would be me then!  Off the top of my head there's:

B-57 Canberra,

 

C-119 Flying Packet,

 

B-24 Liberator,

 

T-6 Texan,

 

EE Lightning

 

and loads of partial bits of models.

Some amazing models there fella.Wishing i could find more videos of the techniques used to aplying the foil around bends / into scribes/rivets and such.

[theplasticsurgeon]

6 hours ago, skiny said:

Some amazing models there fella.Wishing i could find more videos of the techniques used to aplying the foil around bends / into scribes/rivets and such.

It's reasonably stretchy.  I was shown to burnish it down with an ear bud. Then a cocktail stick  into scribed lines.

 

Try it on a cheap kit.  My mule was that Martin Canberra - two whole pounds from a clearance shop.

[Old Man]

10 hours ago, skiny said:

Wow, i thought for a moment i was getting a cookery lesson.Sounds messy but the results you have speak for themselves. very good and i hope when im better and get round to it i will endevour to try and be good as yourself.Question ,do you have to "age" the foil before hand or can it be done by brush afterwards as normal modeling ???

 

 

The chemical aging from the egg-shells or the bleach/copper/lead is done before application to the model. Applying anything over the foil after it is on detracts from the bare metal quality. In my opinion, anyway, washes and such don't work well over foil.

 

A couple of other things about application.

 

You can put foil over foil. Sometimes something goes wrong, a wrinkle or something tears. You can file or sand it down smooth rather than take the whole piece off. The finish will be wrong, of course, if you do, usually too bright, but another another piece of foil over the panel will correct this. It won't show.

 

For bulges like fairings and such, start at the top and work down on all sides in turn, don't try and go up and over and down.

 

Sometimes you will come on something, like a nacelle on a wing, where you just have to sort of rough out the shape and the distortions needed for a two dimensional sheet to cover a three dimensional object. Think what a decal to cover it would likely look like, and figure on some wastage while you get it right. If you are a precise and methodical man, you could cover it in masking tape and make from this a template. I am more the eyeball and guesstimate type.

 

Wing edges, particularly trailing edges, are tricky. Try and arrange your application so you wrap around them. Wingtips will drive you nuts.

 

There will usually be a few small bits where coverage is not complete for some reason or other. A little silver paint will do you fine for these. It won't show.

Edited March 3, 2017 by Old Man

[Johnny_K]

I have been using Bare Metal Foil for a number of years. I tried to apply adhesive to kitchen foil but I could never get the adhesive smooth enough. The adhesive always had waves that telegraphed through the foil. BMF is not cheap, but it is easy to work with.

I use a paper blending stick to smooth the foil after it is applied. The stick is at the right of the photo below.  It works better than anything else that I have tried. I also use a rivet tool from RB Productions to make rivets after the foil in applied. I lightly rub the foil (just one stroke) after it is applied with 0000 steel wool to give the foil the appearance of grain. Most extruded aluminum panels appear to have a grain on the surface.

 

Appling BMF is not difficult, it just takes a long time. Patience is a must.

 

I use three different colors of the foil and I use Tamiya's Smoke to weather the foil.