Make it look like brass

[rcmdrvr]

I am beginning work on a the deck equipment on my current build (Sansun tug).  I have a lot of dull grey metal parts that I have to paint to look like brass.  Nice and shiny.  I brushed some brass paint from Vallejo (acrylic) and did not like the results.

 

Any recommendations.  I do have an airbrush and I am reasonably adept at its use.  Just not sure what paint to use.

[figuerres]

This may be way to simple but how about making some of the parts from brass ?

With some brass sheet, tube and rod you can do a lot, esp if you make a few tools, one guy here used a drill to make a lathe and carved a lantern that came out really good.

[marktiedens]

Maybe after painting the brass color you could overcoat it with some clear gloss paint. I have done this & it came out pretty shiny.

 

/Mark

[Keith_W]

You can try Bare Metal Foil: http://www.bare-metal.com/bare-metal-foil.html

 

It's basically an extremely thin self adhesive foil. Be careful, it's very fragile. The surface needs to be prepped thoroughly, because any defects will show through. 

[geoff]

I think Humbrol do, or did a brass paint that you can polish gently when dry, not seen it for a while though since my R/C scale days 15 years ago!

[Canute]

Don, you can look for Testors Model Master Metalizer Brass lacquer paint; bottle, no spray cans. Its non buffing, so it may not be very shiny.

 

Also, Alclad2 has a shiny brass airbrush only lacquer. For Alclad, surface prep is key. That may be a route for shiny ship-board brass.

[NenadM]

Adding a little drop or two of gold/silver acrylic in another acrylic color of mix of colors can sometime give desred effect particulary on small pieces

 

Edited March 17, 2015 by Nenad

[grsjax]

If you want to try something a little different you might want to consider plating the white metal parts with copper.  Here is a simple DIY copper plating method I found on the web.  http://www.instructables.com/id/simple-Copper-plating/

 

For thicker plating let it sit in the solution longer.  The part can be polished or left natural and painted with a satin clear coat to prevent oxidation.  If you want to get go further and put a second coat of bronze over the copper it can be done but is a bit more complicated.

Edited March 17, 2015 by grsjax

[wefalck]

Only metal looks like metal … apart from this, the plastic modellers have tried to overcome this and there are a number of quite good metallic paints around now. It seems that Alclad is one of the best ones, but I haven't tried it yet myself.

[kurtvd19]

There is a new paint from Krylon called Krylon Foil Metallic - the Gold color looks like polished brass when applied.  It needs to go over a white primer (do not use Rustoleum under this paint).  Coat it with a clear coat and it will do the job.  Just used it on a non-ship project that had a lot of white metal parts that were brass on the original subject.  This paint can be decanted and sprayed with your airbrush as I did for some of the parts.  Others I used the spray can and it worked fine - it was a 1/12 scale project probably bigger than your scale so you might want to stick to the airbrush.  I have a model boat - again in 1/12 scale that will have the "brass" fittings done in this paint rather than plated.  Once it's in the case nobody will touch the parts again to worry about paint vs plating.

Kurt