XTREME Metal is a solvent-borne metal range sprayed through an airbrush to leave a very thin, continuous metal film. The selection runs from matt and white aluminium through titanium, brass, bronze, gold and gunmetal to metallic smoke for darkening panels, and it is backed by filling primers made to go underneath the metal. That pairing is deliberate rather than commercial: with a film this thin, the primer is as much part of the system as the colour itself is.
The metal film is thin enough to copy every irregularity below it. That is the reason filling primers belong to the range: they flood microscopic abrasive marks and give the metal a surface to lie flat on. Skip that step and even a perfectly sprayed metal coat looks coarse. The full choice of bases is in surfacers and primers.
The paint is supplied ready for airbrush equipment and goes on in thin passes from relatively close in. Do not hurry it; coverage builds gradually and a single heavy pass leaves grain that cannot be polished out.
Matt aluminium as the base, white aluminium on recently replaced panels, titanium on heat-stressed sections, metallic smoke to darken. Two or three shades combined give sheet metal that convinces. For masking individual panels, use low-tack materials from masking supplies.
A metal film takes less handling than opaque colour. If decals and weathering are still to come, close the surface with a thin coat from model varnishes, accepting that some lustre goes with it.
A last point on sequence: metal goes on after all the filling and sanding and before the decals, and nothing should be masked over it until it has hardened right through. Give it a day where you would give opaque colour an hour.
Other metal types, acrylics included, are in the parent category metallic model paints, and the bare metal subjects are among the aircraft model kits.
