Some of the Salt Lake City guys are famous for nice finishes (and trim) with Monokote over silkspan with one or two coats of dope. When Monokote first came out, that was the recomended method, but that was also when the stuff was sticky without heat. Maybe Brent Williams can give more details? Sealing the seams with Monokote Solvent or some sort of topcoat is probably very important for slimers.
I have an ex-Norm Whittle model that is 2-tone white/red (both epoxy) with the trim (blue) done with Monokote, apparently applied and sealed with Monokote solvent (I read that they don't sell it anymore). There is no topcoat, but that trim will NOT come off the white epoxy with any method I've tried, including Monokote solvent, heat, and sharp objects.
My FF experience (weighing between coats of clear dope) has convinced me that the first coat of clear dope over tissue adds almost all the weight, and subsequent coats (clear) added almost nothing. I can't say that this applies to silkspan or polyspan, but for certain, clear is MUCH lighter than pigmented dope, so I'm all for building up the substrate with clear dope before you change to primer, silver, grey or white basecoat.
If you are ok with a "colored tissue" look, using 10% pigmented dope with 90% clear will look much the same but won't fade nearly as bad as real colored tissue, and will be much lighter. You can also add UV blocker to some types of top coats, but not sure if you can add it to dope. A lot of guys locally have added pigment in paste form to clear dope. Both methods look similar to colored tissue, but often better...and the reduced fade is HUGE, long term.
Steve
Topic: Appearance points revisited (Read 1989 times)