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I was just curious as to how many of you varnish your figs with matte after you are done painting them. I am just getting started and have heard horror stories of matte varnish ruining metallic paint and taking away it's shine, or covering the model in a white film.

Do you think it is necessary, or a step to be skipped?

I've done both and really the only thing I've found wrong with it is that if you ever want to repaint the mini after it's been varnished it is a giant pain in the to strip...other then that it's actully a pretty good idea. Just get the right varnish and go for it

Its always worth varnishing metal figures. I use brush on gloss followed by brush on matt or satin depending on the effect I want.
As for plastic figures I've never found the need to varnish them (except if I want certain effects) as they don't seem to chip or wear...
Mick

Yeah metal dose chip more often and much easier, but I've had plastic chip too...in the end to varnish or not to varnish is a personal preferance, but i agree varnishing metal is always a good idea.

I do a double coat of varnish...gloss first (it's thicker so i feel it gives better protection) then matte, to remove the shiny look...the plastics so far have not chipped so much, but metals tend to chip whatever you do so I have to repaint off the chipped sections as needed...

Strangely, my tanks do not seem to chip off so much, but maybe because they are mostly plastic...

My DH (all metal) is varnished.

Two coats of Estapol matt PU varnish (PolyUrethane).

Stripping is easy. Acetone bath. Bases dissolve, paint comes off. Couldn't be easier.

Single coat on the plastics. Broken ones get fixed - ones broken beyond repair go into the skip and are replaced. I tend to stick with one paint job anyway.

I used to do it to pretty much everything, but I never actually play enough to make it worth doing.

It's rare that I ever varnish a model, whether it's one of mine or one I'm painting for someone else. I'm pretty careful with my stuff
and if it's for someone else then it's their responsibility to unless they ask me to do it.
Mainly I don't bother for a few reasons such as the posibility of the varnish frosting, the darkening of the overall look of the model, which I can't control, and sheer laziness.

A good trick is to add some varnish to the points that will touch the ground if dropped. Head, hands and the tips of weapons\clothing etc. But doing this isn't for everyone. Still, sometimes it works well depending on the mini. My vampire always chipped on the corner of his cape, a bit of varnish fixed that.

I personally don't bother with varnish unless its a really good mini and Im proud of the paint job (so.. never varnish ).

I'm a big fan of varnish on my Nids, I use a variety of effects. I only use brush-on Humbrol enamels, all the acrylic ones I've tried have left a nasty discolouration and as for sprays... don't even go there.

I used to varnish all of my models until I got a bad batch of spray sealer which ended up frosting several models.

As a bit of random discovery, it also turns out that certain glaze effects don't work when covered in sealant. In particular, undiluted GW purple ink produces a very nice metallic blue effect which is completely ruined if covered in sealant.

For every one person that says you should do it... there's ten right behind him with horror stories.

It's not a horror story to say that varnish can dull glaze effects. It's just God's way of telling modellers to varnish then apply the glaze afterwards.

The basic paintjob needs to be protected because wargame figures get a lot of handling.

I do a gloss coat followed by satin for vehicles or matt for figures. Finally I gloss over things like jewels, lenses and metallic parts.

It probably isn't a good idea if you have already flocked your models and then spray varnish? Should I cover the bases, with say newspaper, and just cut holes for legs/feet then spray varnish? I have tons of metal figs, I'll see how it goes with maybe a test one just to see how it compares to a fig painted the same way from the same squad. Please GW gives us plastic SOBs.