HBG’s sculpts are great, but they lack the smooth finish of the OOB pieces. So, I did a little test and sprayed an HBG piece with some Testors semi-gloss spray lacquer. It made the piece a little too glossy compared to the OOB stuff, but it did give the piece a slightly smoother feel to it. That got me wondering, would flat/lusterless spray lacquer add a tiny bit of luster, or none at all? It might slightly improve the feel of the piece if nothing else, and should help protect the softer plastic against damage. However, I don’t have a can of that stuff and that might be $7 wasted if it doesn’t improve anything. Anyone have any input on this?
Finally, if you happen to have a can of flat spray lacquer amongst your modeling tools, and if you happen to have a spare HBG sculpt laying around… :wink: would you mind doing a test for me?
There is a artist on here known as Cyanight. If you check out his thread and work he has a very think coat of glossy lacquer on his finished pieces. A lot, almost all of his units are HBG or even shapeways. The lacquer makes them look very smooth. The properties of lacquer bond in a layering form. So the more coats you apply the smoother the build of surface, as the coats layer on top of each other. In theory it will add some smoothness but you may want to give the HBG pieces a slight sand polish. Im talking a 400-500 grit sand paper very light as you don’t want to sand off any of the details. Also you don’t want to go too heavy with your spray coats. 3-4 very thin coats will be better than 1 heavy coat as the lacquer will build up and smother the details of the sculpt.
Hope this helps
If you are really looking for a good finish on all your HBG pieces, you could buy a couple small cans of differing lacquers and test each one. $20 should get almost 3 cans worth. It may be a waste to some degree, but at least you can know for sure which one works best.
I have a flat Testors lacquer/sealant spray that I used on Tall Paul’s finished pieces. Granted, these were painted first, so the effect may be thrown off. However, I will say that I did not observe any level of gloss on the HBG or OOB pieces after I applied it. It was quite flat as advertised. FWIW.
