OK. I had to paint my base color with Krylon ATV/Boat Cammo (tan) from a spray can. It’s all I had access to. It’s a very “rough” textured paint. Way too large in scale. I thought I could overcome it by sealing it with Tamiya Clear Coat (flat). But…my washes totally do not work! I’m mixing Acrylic (Revell) with water (1/10ish). The wash just beads up and rolls off! Won’t even stay in the seams/joints. I tried an Ochre/water wash on a Schurzen and it just beaded up and I literally took it and rinsed it off in the sink! It’s like a real car finish. I think I made a bone-headed mistake by using the clear coat but I read that is provides a good surface to begin your weathering from.
Can I make a wash using Acrylic and laquor thinner?? Water just ain’t doing it. Note: When I tried to weather the Krylon (before sealing) it just soaked up the wash immediately. I couldn’t flow it at all.
I’m now stuck with a “brand new” looking StuG III! Not my intent. Painting and weathering is the fun part! I guess I could dust it with MiG pigs… Any advice will be appreciated!!
If you’re doing a wash with acrylics thinned with water, you need to add a couple of drops of dishwashing liquid to act as a wetting agent. Otherwise, your wash is mostly water and will do what water does on a hard surface… bead up and roll off.
PS: You mentioned using a Tamiya flat clear coat. As far as I am aware, they don’t make one. If you are referring to Tamiya’s X-21 Flat Base, be aware that this is not a clear coat. Rather, it’s a “flatting agent” which is added to gloss colours (or Clear Gloss X-22) to make them flat. Using X-21 on its own will result in your model looking like it’s covered in a translucent white goo.
Krylon is a modified enamel similar to a laquer based paint. Thats why it dries fast and hard. I use the gloss colors alot for auto modeling. It polishes out well. I’ve played with this Krylon range of colors before and they do not lend themselves well to scale modeling.
Acrylic will not mix with laquer thinner. You DO NOT WANT laquer thinner anywhere near your kit. You will have no paint on a melted model.
BTW did you use an actual Flat Coat or Flat Base? Just checking as a common mistake is using flat base which is actually only for mixing with other Tamiya paints to cut the gloss.
My honest suggestion is this–if you have access to Tamiya clear, then you have access to Tamiya’s range of paints?
Strip your StuG of its paint–use Simple Green; immerse the whole model in it overnight and the paint will come away with some gentle toothbrush scrubbing–and repaint it with Tamiya Dark Yellow base coat and acrylic camo colors if desired. Use Tamiya paints or Model Master ACRYLICS from now on.
Using acrylics as a base coat relieves you from a whole host of potential weathering minefields and problems. You can weather right over the finish with oils and mineral spirits after letting it dry for only a few hours. If you use Solvaset, you can put your decals on directly over the base coat without using a clear coat. And Inever even seal my final model–the acrylics are that durable.
I’m the guy with the Stug III that had real problems with the painting (Krylon spray). Well, it actually turned out really nice (I think). I ended up using some MiG washes and made some tarps and it looks really cool. Not to weathered. Anyways, what I want to do is place it in a small diorama at a dirt intersection maybe abutting an old infantry fortification. Along with it I want to add a Self-propelled gun or a tank hunter (turretless). I’m going to show them abandoned (since I can’t yet paint figures). My goal is to depict them with the title: “The Detrious of Messina.” It would be a symbolic portrayal of the evacuation of Messina in 1943. Here’s my delimma. I want to do either: Hummel, Wespe, Grille or SiG33. And I want to do it in panzer grey…not dunklegelb. But for all the research I’ve done, all these vehicles were essentially produced after the FEB '43 switch to dunklegelb. Thus precluding me from using one of the above in panzer gray. The units involved would be the 15th Panzer Grenadier Div and the Herman Goering. The HG did have Hummels but I think they would have been salvaged from the Tunisia debacle and probably would have been desert camo.
So, do you have a recommendation of either an SP or Jager that I could do in panzer gray (historically accurate) and if so, what kit to you recommend? Note: I found an old Tamiya box-art with a Hummel done in gray but I don’t believe that to be accurate.