Ammo by Mig Jimenez Acrylic Metal Colors Review
By Michael Benolkin
| Date of Review | January 2016 | Manufacturer | Ammo by Mig Jimenez |
|---|---|---|---|
| Subject | Acrylic Metal Colors | Product Number | See below |
| Pros | Interesting new colors/textures | Cons | See text |
| Skill Level | Basic | MSRP (USD) | $3.75/17ml bottle |
Review
Ammo by Mig Jimenez is family of paints and weathering products designed to take your models to the next step. Master modeler Mig Jimenez helped to launch another paint line by developing and teaching modelers how to make achieve great results with those products. A few years ago, he created his own company and developed a new series of products to tackle areas overlooked by other paint companies.
As paint technology advances, we've seen several companies develop metalizer colors in acrylics instead of the usual lacquer base. Until recently, one of the main advantages of certain lacquer-based paints was the fineness of the metal particles where the resulting finish looks like metal rather than a coating of metal flakes. Now several acrylic producers have achieved the ability of suspending and laying out a consistent coat of metalizer which claim to have a reached degrees of fineness better than their lacquer equivalents. Ammo by Mig Jimenez has released their new acrylic-based metal colors into the marketplace.
There are ten new colors available, each comes in a 17ml bottle and the latest colors include:
- A.Mig-0190 Old Brass
- A.Mig-0191 Steel
- A.Mig-0192 Polished Metal
- A.Mig-0193 Titanium
- A.Mig-0194 Aluminum
- A.Mig-0195 Silver
- A.Mig-0196 Metallic Blue
- A.Mig-0197 Brass
- A.Mig-0198 Gold
- A.Mig-0199 Copper
As with the other acrylic colors in their catalog, these colors can be applied by brush or airbrush and clean up the same as other acrylics (I use Windex or Isopropyl Alcohol). I tested these paints on a project currently underway - the AMK 1/48 Mig-31BM Foxhound. The kit's intakes are magnificently done and are either bare metal or painted with a silver protective coat. I used the Polished Aluminum straight from the bottle in my Iwata HP-CS airbrush. The acrylic metal color goes down smoothly. After leaving the parts to dry/cure for six hours, the paint was fairly robust to handling. As I assembled the parts, the acrylic metal tends to craze when exposed to cement, but if you leave the parts alone, the crazing disappears with no texture left behind.
The few spots that had bare plastic exposed were quickly touched up. I applied three other colors to different parts of the engines and had the same results. As you'd expect, airbrushing touch-ups worked fine, but I also did some touch-ups with a paint brush and the results were just as nice. Try that with a lacquer paint.
The next test was to see how the paint responded to enamel-based washes. Oops. The wash softened the metal finish, or removed it altogether. After the wash had dried, the damaged metallic paint left no crazing and the problem was quickly touched up like it never happened. When I applied a coat of Future, the wash worked fine and the acrylic metallics were safe. I used Tamiya yellow masking tape and had no problems with paint pulling off.
I like these acrylic metallic paints. The only thing I note as a minus is the grain of the metallic particles suspended in the paint - they are not as fine as the current enamel or lacquer-based metallizers so I don't know if I'd use them on external surfaces like a wing, fuselage, or car body, but in areas of the model like intakes, wheel wells, gear struts, engine bays, gun breeches, etc., these are quicker and easier to use than many of the alternatives. So far, these are the only metallic colors I've used that work as well on a paint brush as they do in my airbrush.
Definitely recommended.
My sincere thanks to Ammo by Mig Jimenez for this review samples!