"Hairspray Technique Suitable for Wargaming?" Topic

Is the hairspray method of chipping paint suitable for weathering wargame models, considering how much handling they get?

The hairspray is used to create a water soluble layer between the primer color and the main color layers. Then you dabble a little water where you want chips and the main color flakes off.

Is the completed paint job sturdy enough for the typical rough handling that armor can see on the table? Or is this technique more appropriate for dioramas and whatever you call it when you don't play with your tanks?

Thanks,
Tom

After you apply the hairspray treatment, you follow it up with a varnish and then matt to seal it in.

Hum never heard of that technique.

You don't mention using salt… the method I'm familiar with uses hairspray, salt sprinkled on as a mask, then the paint, then scrubbing under water to release the salt.

It's fine when sealed. I've used it for tanks and terrain, no problems.

Hairspray is often used as a fixitive for charcoal drawings BTW.

Hairspray can also be used as a fixative for foliage.

Jim

I have used the salt method to great effect . There is no " unused salt when done only painted surfaces.

I think salt and hairspray are two distinct methods, not that they can't be used together. I haven't tried either, though I want to experiment with both.

It sounds like with a good sealer varnish, everything is fine with both methods. Has anyone else tried these chipped paint methods?

Anyone have any pics of these methods? They both sound very elaborate. Why not paint the "chip". Dab of gunmetal then a thin outline of "primer".

YouTube link

IIRC Piers Brand uses these techniques. You'll find him over on the WWII boards mostly.

Your Kidding,

It is a different method to get a weathered look. You are kinda working your way up through the paint layers instead of painting the weathering on top of your fresh paint job.

For instance you are painting the metal, painting the "primer" and rust layer, painting your color, adding your decals, and then "removing" it all like it would in a real environment.

Haywire has it exactly right. I spend part of my hobby time building diorama models, and I used hairspray to get the chipping effect on this Tiger:

I didn't have much success with spraying the hairspray on, because it was too hard to control. After some experimentation I settled on stippling it manually on the appropriate areas.

I don't remember exactly how many layers of paint and weathering went into that tank. Off the top of my head, the sequence was something like:

1. black primer
2. hair spray
3. German grey
4. "chip" some of the grey off to show the primer
5. pigment dirt and oil paint streaks and splats
6. matte varnish to seal everything so far
7. hair spray again
8. whitewash
9. oil and pigment weathering / dirt
10. "chip" off the whitewash
11. matte varnish again
12. final weathering / dirt

For a wargames model you would want to use far fewer layers than this, but with the larger detail on a 1/35 model you can go a bit crazy.

More photos at my phlog: link

Snodipus, great looking tiger. Have you used the hairspray on wargame models? If so how has the paint effect stood up to wargaming?

Fizzypickles, Thanks, that's a great link, though I had to add "-golf" to the search criteria.

I haven't used it on vehicles for wargaming, but I have used it on terrain:

I'm sure it would work fine for wargame vehicles. The idea is to just apply hairspray where you want the chips, so the paint on any other areas should be unaffected, and just as resilient as any other paint. Depending on the scale, you would also need to be fairly judicious about where and how you apply it, but as you can see in the pic above it works just as well at 1/100 (15mm) as it does at 1/35.

If you don't trust the hairspray technique, you can always use "liquid vinyl masks" instead.

I Used salt technique on one model, and my opinion is its not worth the effort, especially in 15mm..

You will do it faster with sponge and brush with not worse effect.\

So not worth the effort.

AK Interactive has a product AK088 "Worn Effects" and AK089 "Heavy Effects" to create chipping effects that I've been eyeing off recently. This blog post gives a very brief description
link

Seems fairly straight forward with these products, but I tend to agree that 15mm may be too small. I've seen some great work using this on 40k and Bolt Action kits however. I'm picking it up to use initially on terrain, but once I'm happy with how to apply the method I'll give it a go on 15mm sci fi tanks. The Khurasan Red Banner, Siler and soon to be releases Goanna tank are large enough, and CMG's large merc tanks are also candidates.