Chipping Fluid Alternative

Hi everyone,

Lately I've been wanting to get into doing some chipping or "paint washing" techniques to get rust to come through looking natural. I've found that most people use AK Chipping Fluid and I was wondering if people knew of an alternative that was available in Saskatoon, or at least Canada.

The effect I'm trying to achieve is sealing the rust colour in first with the fluid, then painting the model as normal, then using warm water, wash away the outer layer of paint in the sections I want rust. Issue is, I keep washing away the rust too

Any suggestions or tips would be greatly appreciated

I'm getting the feel that there are two different things you are trying to do here from what I'm reading: chipped paint and rust corrosion, which are both weathering techniques. Both of these things have been on my to-do list for a long time, but having a house kinda got in the way of it for a while.

A quick and dirty (and cheap!) way to do chipping involves sealant (wasn't someone selling a bunch of this in barter town?), hair spray, and kosher salt.  After priming your model, give it a rough once-over with what you want the exposed material to look like, let it dry, then seal it.  Once the sealant is dry, nail it with some hair spray and sprinkle your coarse ground salt onto it, and let that dry.  Then paint your base coat of what you want the mini to look like on top of that.  Once that is dry you should be able to come back to it with a clean brush and some warm water to dissolve away the salt (and any paint attached to it) revealing the colour underneath, with the sealant protecting the layers below.  Then you can proceed to weather and finish to your heart's content.

For corrosion, you have a couple routes you can go.  The simple way would be to thin an orange or brown wash with some medium and apply with a fine detail brush.  If you want to get fancier, then you get into stuff like pigment powders and mineral spirits.  The spirits can be had from just about any hardware store.  Buying pigments on their own can be pricy, but if you can track down non-oil based pastel (repeat: avoid OIL based pastels like the plague), you can grind them back down into pigments and have tons of colours to work with as well (grey-thru-black is great for ash for exhaust vents, for example).  Sprinkle the powdered pigment on where you want the corrosion, then carefully dab and brush on the spirits to spread it out and get the running effects you want.  Again, I would HIGHLY recommend sealing the model before doing this.  Once you are done with this process and things have dried again, finish up any other deals and seal it up so you don't have colour coming off on your fingers any time you manipulate the model.

Yeah sorry I may not be using the right words. The tutorial that I watched, the guy just painted the whole model in his rust colours, then sealed it with AK Chipping Fluid. After that dried he painted it silver (The colour he wanted) then after that was dry he used a brush and warm water to wash away the silver layer. That's the effect I'm looking to achieve, but I can't find this AK Chipping Fluid anywhere in Canada, plus I'd rather not pay the 20 bucks in shipping for 4 dollars worth of material.

Also, what sealant do you use, and where do you purchase it? I have been trying to find a good one but so far the two I've purchased don't work well (they come off with water )

acrylic masking liquid should work for what you're describing, you can find it at art placement, downtown, or the U of S bookstore.

Hmm, maybe I didn't apply enough of the masking material. As that is exactly what I have haha.

Can you post a picture of a mini or model with the effect you'd like to emulate?

This is the effect I'm trying to achieve. This is actually from the tutorial I mentioned in the above comments.

Did he use an airbrush? Most of that "under effect" look I've seen is only really achievable with airbrush

I use a seasponge with a dark color to add damage to mine, it's simple and effective

I think you should just break down and get some chipping medium. Masking fluid works, but you have to apply it on the areas you know you want to be chipped and remove those specific areas that have been masked.

If you can't find a Canadian supplier for AK hobby products (which are good, I use some) then I'd try looking for Vallejo (the Den can probably get some if they don't have it on their shelf already). MiG, or just about anywhere. As Paz said it would surprise me if a well stocked art store didn't have the exact product just in a different bottle and not specifically called chipping medium.

Are you using this technique for painting vehicles or other large flat-ish areas? If it's for regular 28mm mini's I also fully endorse the sponge on damage approach.