Burnishing

[aon14]

What with NMM, SENMM and this sort of stuff being the current fad....
Look rather like they\'re far too time consuming for me.

I thought you might be interested in an old technique.
Burnishing only works on metal figures...
To burnish a figure, you first scratch the metal oxide off with a scalpel or similar. This leaves the surface shiny but scratched. You polish this up with a rounded steel tool or bodkin. The surface will then be polished metal, which therefore does a pretty good impression of polished metal.
Finish by painting in lo-lights and gloss varnishing. You can mix grey \"smoke\" or similar in with the varnish to dull the effect.
I uploaded a picture demonstrating the effect as 30701.
The figure reflects as one\'d expect and hence is actually rather difficult to photo with my limited skills.
Parts like the flesh are effectively much darker than the figure, which is reflecting a whole bunch of light.
Hope you find this interesting.

 

[supervike]

That is interesting...

Is the entire suit of armor done this way?

How does that look in real life? Does it look effective, or just like a shiny bit?

I knew people talked about burnishing, usually on 54mm and larger figs.

I\'ll have to try this, it looks fun to try.

 

[nejoho]

I used this technique on Louen Louencour the Brettonian king several years ago ( It\'ll be in a White Dwarf somewhere, or the box cover), I thought it was something that was worth investigating at a later date, never got round to it though, so many other things to do. Maybe it\'s time to get out the Wax 5 again!!

 

[Nomis]

I remember using a similar technique on some 90mm medieval knights back in the days of Humbrol enamel paints.

If memory serves I used a brass wire brush - the type used for suede leather - to bring the metal up to a good shine.

I then put on a mixture of black paint and varnish to create shadows/highlights and seal the model.

The important thing is to ensure the mini is fully sealed by varnish otherwise it will discolour and may even get lead rot.

I hadn\'t though of trying this with acrylics due to the problems with adhesion on shiny surfaces but having read the recent thread on that I might give it a go - I\'ve just bought the Reaper Gold knight!

 

[aon14]

Originally posted by supervike
Is the entire suit of armor done this way?

How does that look in real life? Does it look effective, or just like a shiny bit?

I knew people talked about burnishing, usually on 54mm and larger figs.

I\'ll have to try this, it looks fun to try.

The whole of the armour is burnished aside from the gold bits on the crest.
The real figure looks a lot better than the photo. You can\'t see any of the tiny imperfections in my polishing.
The metal looks like very shiny metal, rather than the rather odd look NMM figures have \"in the flesh\".
I had to wait until the sun went behind a cloud to take that pic, in direct sunlight it is SO bright the picture would look weird.

You\'d not want to burnish a figure has a lot of fiddly bits on the armour.
Ye olde 25 mil in accurate proportions were too small for this as well.
The huge chunky 30 mil now in vogue are far less delicate.

It\'s also rather effective on a figure will be all matte apart from just a metal sword... Just burnishing a sword is easy.
I use humbrol gloss cote varnish and there\'s no noticeable problem with it adhering to burnished figures...
Although.
Having said that, I relatively rarely could be bothered burnishing.
I paint for wargaming purposes.
I\'d not normally want to spend over an hour per figure... !\'d normally want to do a batch in about a day or 8 hours total.
I guess that\'d be less than half a hour per figure.
There again, you wouldn\'t look at one of these magnified 10 times size on your screen and think \"WOW!\".

Oh, BTW.
AFAIK lead rot should be a thing of the past from most professional manufacturers.
Last time I saw a figure with this was about 1979.
Better metals and no lead nowadays.

 

[aon14]

Originally posted by Nomis
I remember using a similar technique on some 90mm medieval knights back in the days of Humbrol enamel paints.

If memory serves I used a brass wire brush - the type used for suede leather - to bring the metal up to a good shine.
<<snip>>

A wire brush is ok, better for complex surfaces.
I do this prior to undercoating figures.
Would have thought you\'d still want to polish with a bodkin though.
Let us know how it goes if you try it though.