My question is will the hairspray/salt technique work with lacquers or do I have to use acrylics? Thanks for any help.
Hairspray under your paint gives you a "removable" paint using a stiff brush or a toothpick for scratches due the fact water could dissolve hairspray.
Salt will give you chipping in paint when salt crystals are physically removed with a stiff brush.
In hairspray/salt technique you use hairspray to fix salt on your surface and using water and acrylics you will obtain both effects above.
Well dry acrylic color is water resistant but couldn't hold a great amount of stress so it could be "easily" removed and wear out over an "soft" base (the laquer).
(You can diluted Tamiya acrylics with water to accent this effect, too and use water when acrylic isn't completely cured)
Lacquers are solvent based and quite aggressive so will tend to dissolve the hairspray and bound quite well with your model surface.
Hairspray/salt technique with lacquers will give you only paint chips where salt crystals are removed; you will miss the little, "corroded" edges around chips where crystals were, among others but still will have the perception of "thickness" in paint layer around chips.
My only advise is that these techniques aren't so easy to control and a bit random--> I usually repaint most of the chips using a sponge.
You first time?--> practice a bit with an old model
