Matt varnish recommendations?

[Sky Potato]

I've been using Vallejo Premium Colour acrylic polyurethane varnish (62.062) for a while now. It goes nicely through the airbrush and also brushes on pretty well, or at least it used to.

 

HOWEVER

 

Vallejo have changed the label - and with the label change, comes other changes as well. The new bottle is way glossier than a matt varnish should be - in fact, its glossier even than the bottle of Vallejo satin gloss from the same range.

 

There's three possible options:

 

• Vallejo have mislabelled a bottle of gloss varnish as a bottle of matt varnish, and the new label is a co-incidence
• I've somehow applied it wrong (I've blitzed the bottle on the vortex mixer before use and I've applied it no differently to usual. It can't be this)
• Most plausibly, Vallejo have changed something in the Premium colour line and its just not as good as it was.

 

I'm going to go with the third option, that something has changed. I'm like Garth from Wayne's World, I fear change 

 

Which brings me back to my question. Can anybody recommend a good matt varnish?

[Karhedron]

Testers Dullcote is the gold standard IMHO. Perfect flat finish every time. 

[Oxydo]

Does your bottle have a milky layer of sediment at the bottom? If so, that would explain the  gloss issue since the poly varnish tend to seperate into gloss and whatever they added to achieve a matt finish over time.

[Sky Potato]

34 minutes ago, Oxydo said:

Does your bottle have a milky layer of sediment at the bottom? If so, that would explain the  gloss issue since the poly varnish tend to seperate into gloss and whatever they added to achieve a matt finish over time.

No, there was no separation and besides, I gave it a good 45 seconds at least on the vortex mixer.

[N1SB]

Oh man, thx for the heads up, because I use Vallejo Matte Varnish.  I'll have to watch out for this when I get a new bottle.

[Firedrake Cordova]

I've used their Matt Polyurethane Varnish (72.651) without a problem, but that was before the branding (and possible formula) change. It does look like they've introduced an Ultra-Matt version (72.653).

 

I've not used it, but AK Interactive's Ultra-Matt varnish seems pretty popular (Duncan Rhodes uses it)

 

No idea if that's any help or not  

Edited 13 hours ago by Firedrake Cordova

[apologist]

If you're open to rattle can sprays, I can thoroughly recommend Winsor & Newton professional matt varnish spray. There's a brush-on version that might work with airbrush too, though I can't attest to that.

 

Here's a before and after so you can see the matting effect it has on transfers, and that there's no texture deposition (the fine 3d print lines on the circular area are still visible, for example):

 

 

 

(Rest assured there's no discernible colour shift – the difference here is due to lighting. The before is at night, under artificial light, the second early morning natural light.)

Edited 9 hours ago by apologist