Hai,

I am using Tamiya gloss black as base coat for "alclad aircraft aluminium" and am very happy with it.

Recently I read that when you vary the "blackness" of the basecoat for certain panels, the result is that the shine of the Alclad layer is slightly different leading to an enhanced impresion of different panels.

Varying the base coat seems much safer than using tape on a finished alclad surface.

My only question is: how much gloss white should I add (minimum, maximum) to the standard Tamiya black X-1 to get a grey that will show a different surface finish once covered with alclad without overdoing it.

Drabslab,
I've used that technique a few times, and it does work. Honestly, I used gloss Black, A few Gloss Grays, and even Gloss Brown. Each produces a different Aluminum finish using the Flat Aluminum 101. I have 10 different shades of Alcad II for different purposes. For the most part I've found that they vary to much in Aluminum shade to panel variation straight from the bottle.

As for the tape pulling up the Alcad, just don't tape of Chrome, or some of the shinier shades. Their home site has the full list.

Joel

Good, I will try this :-)

My idea is to paint everything gloss black (tamiya acryl) and then do individual panels adding knwon percentages of gloss white (also tamiya acryl of course).

I will make some pictures so you can see the result

Drabslab,
Looking forward to seeing your test results.
Joel