CAn water be used to thin Tamiya paint?

Tools, Techniques, and Reference Materials Painting and airbrushing
1

instead of the Tmiya thinner can I use water?

2

You can, but i would make two recommendations…use distilled water, since regular tap water can sometime leave a white chalky film in the paint (from the chemicals and minerals in the water) and mix it 50-50 with isopropyl rubbing alcohol. That lowers the drying time.

Jeff

3

Ditilled water comes highly recommended, here in Australia, methylated Spirits is an excellent and cheap thinner for Tamiya paints.

cheers

Mike

4

Thanks guys. I’m too cheap to pay $2.99 for a little bottle of tamiya thinner, so distilled water it is.

5

Word of caution:

If you are airbrushing, you should use Tamiya’s Thinner because it has an acrylic retarder which slows down the drying time. Otherwise, your paint may dry in the air before it reaches the model.

I use isopropyl rubbing alcohol for brush painting. It’s 99 cents here for a big bottle that will last a long time. I only use Tamiya’s thinner when airbrushing.

Jesse

6

if you go online to sqaudron.com or greatmodels.com (or wherever you shop online) you can get the big 750ml bottle of Tamiya thinner for about $6.50… compared to $2.99 for their 30 or 50ml bottle and it lasts forever!!! (for 3 dollars more you get the equivalent of 25 of the little bottles) I’ve been using mine for more than 7 months now and haven’t emptied it yet (close but enough for 2 or so models more left in it)

I really recommend it if you are new to acrylics or airbrushing, it makes painting with them a little easier as the paint is a little more forgiving thinned with it…

7

I like tamiya thinner. It works really well for most acrylics including MM.

8

never seen the bigger Tamiya thinner bottles here in Australia…

I use Tamiya thinner to thin Aeromaster/Pollyscale paints with great success.

cheers

Mike

9

In my experience, Tamiya’s own thinner yields much nicer results than water. I tried using water and alcohol but wasn’t pleased with the finish, particularly with the gloss paints. So, IMHO, it’s worth the price for that alone.

10

Hi all,

I’v had great success using alcohol to thin the tamiya acrylics. The only advise that i have is that i’v heared and notice that you get much better results with gloss colours if you use the tamiya thinner. With flat it doesn’t seem to matter as it seems to give an even flatter finish.

Cheers Trev

11

I have been getting great AB results thinning Tamiya acrylic with lacquer thinner.

12

I used distiled water in the past exclusively, and used the thinner to clean the AB. I switched recently to using their thinner for thinning the paint, and the results are much better. Not as much drying residue in the tip of the AB and great results on the model.

13

hmm doesn’t thinning acryls with lacquer thinner kinda defeat their purpose?

14

Thinning Tamiya acrylic with laquer thinner does defeat the purpose of the notion of using non-toxic paints; however, with laquer thinner, the paint film provides superior adherance to the plastic. On some tests I’ve completed some time ago, laquer thinned Tamiya acrylics performed excellent: no tip drying, smooth flow, no change in paint-film characteristics (flats and glosses) and it cleans up fast with a bit more of the laquer thinner. The idea originated from a car modeler, I think, on an outside model forum. With all the great results I’ve had with the laquer/Tamiya thinning, I still prefer enamels. In regular (preferred use) with Tamiya, I thin them with store brand 91% Isoprophol. As an important side note- I learned the hard way, not priming my model before airbrushing the weak-adhearing Tamiya and had paint lift off when trying to do masking. Airbrush your favorite enamel primer prior to painting . This will boost adhesion. Good luck!