[Painting] Krylon Mystique - APR - [Long]

Hello All,

I've finished my first experiment with Krylon Mystique. I've arrange the APR
(After Painting Report) into the following areas so impatient folks can skip
to the punch line if they want.

1. What I used 2. What Krylon recommends you do 3. What I did 4. What were the
results
5. My worth-what-you-paid-for-it comments.

Yeah, sure it's anal retentive, but you can't be an engineer for over 20

years without something snapping.

1. WHAT I USED:

I purchased Krylon Mystique Color2Color kit 1442 Magenta/Gold. It
consists of three 5.5oz (155g) aerosol cans: Base Coat Black, Color Coat, and
a Top Coat Clear. It cost $14.99US and was purchased from a Michael's Arts &
Crafts. Michael's is a chain store and was the only place I could find locally
that offered all three varieties of the Mystique line.

The subject was a 1/300 bio-tank produced by Gladiator Miniatures, pack
BW9.
I had purchased these at close out prices from the ex-US importer at
ColdWars 2002. It was the original post concerning Mystique that got me
thinking about knocking out an organic Dirt Side army fast.

You can see the subject at:
<A
HREF="http://members.aol.com/mxconnell/Krylon2.jpg">http://members.aol.c
om/mxconnell/Krylon2.jpg</A>

I apologize that this is a scan. I tacked two hulls to the bottom and side of
a jewelry box and ran it through my flatbed scanner. Anyway, this at least
gives you a top and side view with some idea how bumpy the pieces were.

2. WHAT KRYLON RECOMMENDS:

All metal or wood pieces should be primed prior to using the black basecoat.

Step 1 is the black basecoat which should be done in 2-3 thin coats.
Allow 30 minutes before putting on the color coat.

Step 2 is the color coat. They recommend 3-6 thin coats. Allow the color
coat
to become tacky between coats.Wait 20-30 minutes before going to Step 3.

Step 3 is 2-3 light clear coats. Let it get tacky between coats. Dry to
the touch in 1 hour.

3. WHAT I DID

I primed three hulls using Games Workshop black primer from a spray can and
allowed to dry overnight.

I set one hull aside and coated the remaining two hulls with the Krylon black
coat. I did this because the literature really emphasized the importance of
the black coat. I wondered if there was something in it that helped this

weird two color thing happen. I gave the hulls two coats. When dry it was a
matt black compared to the satin black of the GW primer. The Krylon base coat
did not seem as black.

I then gave one base coated hull and the bare GW primer hull 6 coats of color
coat. The remaining base coated hull got only three coats of the color coat. I
wanted to see how the number of coats affected the results. I cannot swear
that all coats could be called "light".

All hulls got two coats of clear.

4. WHAT WERE THE RESULTS:

I could detect no difference between any of the hulls. There appears to be
nothing special about Krylon's special Basecoat other than it's black. Three
color coats seemed to be sufficient to get the desired effect. And what is
that effect? The color changes as the angle formed by the lines between the
viewer with the painted object and the painted object with the light source
changes.

Err, what?

When I look straight down on the hull with a light source above my head (the
angle is less than 10degrees) the color I see is a deep purple. As the angle
gets larger, the color changes to kind of a copper color then to a gold color
and finally, when the angle is about 120 degrees, a greenish gold (like one of
the GW paints whose name I can't recall).

All colors look like a metallic.

The color across the hull is fairly uniform. Because it is shiny, engraved
detail is darker, but of the same color. The contours of this hull were not
sufficient to have different parts of the hull appear to be a different color.

5. MY WORTH-WHAT-YOU-PAID-FOR-THEM COMMENTS:

I was hoping to see a variety of colors on one model and have the colors move
as I rotated the model (kinda like the inside of some sea shells). This paint
will not do that, at least not on 1/300 models.

I placed all three hulls spread out on my gaming table such that they were
about 2 to 3 feet apart. There was no noticeable difference in the color of
the hulls since, though widely spread in game terms, there was still not a big
enough difference in the angle of the light hitting the hulls. This may be due
to the purely top down lighting of my table, but it was still a
disappointment. Models will probably not appear to change color as they move
across the table.

I sprayed the hulls in a homemade spray booth made from a Rubbermaid utility
closet and a bathroom exhaust fan. I can usually prime several figures in this
booth and not smell paint a few feet away from it. When I used this

paint, my basement had a pungent odor I could smell 20 feet from the booth. I
think many brain cells died for this experiment.

The paint is like any gloss paint. Spray on a few coats and there is some
slight loss of detail.

Over-spray of the color coat onto a piece of white paper was almost
clear. Maybe the black basecoat is behaving the same way a piece of glass does
when its backside is painted black, kind of like a cheap mirror. Might be some
interesting techniques possible by painting on a basecoat of black and
various shades of gray - an experiment for another day.

This is a time consuming paint. Two basecoats spaced 20 minutes apart, wait 30
minutes, 3 color coats at 10 minutes per, wait thirty minutes, end with two
clear coats spaced 10 minutes. That's 110 minutes start to finish for what I
think are probably the minimum number of coats (excluding priming).

Any color variations seen in the posted JPEG are due to the scanner light
source moving during the scan. When I look inside the jewelry box, I see two
hulls of uniform color.

The color change is cool, but it needs something big. I think it would look
really cool on a 1/25th scale model car body, that might be big enough
and curvy enough to really play to the paints strengths. All the sample pieces
in
the literature are things like turned candle sticks or tool boxes -
things much larger than you'd normally put on a gaming table. Hmm, maybe some
25mm scale LARGE scenery items would work.

Well, I'm sure this was longer than anybody was looking for, but I hope
someone finds it worthwhile.

Regards, Martin

G'day,

Thanks for the report. The figs I was thinking about using it on are also DS
scale so doesn't sound like this would work for me either.

Cheers

Thanks for that report!!

I'm looking at 25mm infantry and vehicles, which means painting on extra
detail after the colour coat, so if/when I get a round tuit I'll post a
report on my success/failure.