Hello My name is peter… I am a fine artist just getting into model building. A while back i bought a 1/148 F/A 18 hornet. the build went well but two things. # 1 the painting. I bought some testors enamel paint for the jet and i don’t think i thinned it enough cause it ruined my pasche talon air brush and clogged my nozzle on my Iwata ecplise… the finish on the jet was terrible… i was wondering how thin the paint should be. and the other problem i have is gluing the clear parts with out ruining them with glue… I have a boeing 737-800 1/144 on the way and would like to get this one right any advise would be great thanks
Hello!
I developed a simple indicator for thinning paint (enamels) - I get them into a little glass jar and add some thinner, mix them throughly and then I tilt the glass alittle and let the mixture flow down the wall. Now the mixture has to leave a definite colour spot on the wall, but that spot has to be slightly translucent. If it’s solid, the mix needs more thinner. If it’s totally translucent you have to add paint (and that’s bad, because the you make more and more of that stuff - and you aren’t supposed to reuse it if you don’t use it up shortly after mixing). So add small quantities of thinner and check often.
As for the clear parts, there are many ways. You can use glues, that don’t dissolve clear parts - like white glue. You can use clear acrylics to do that - even future floor polish. You can use clear epoxy. If you are careful, you can use CA glue, but there’s the definite danger of fogging the canopy inside. To prevent this, people coat the canopy before glueing, for example with Future.
Hope it helps, have a nice day
Paweł
Hi Peter!
You just been initiated in the same way I think 100% of us have when we first got into the hobby. Ha-ha-ha! Welcome to the club! You’ve definitely earned your stripes.
Like Pawel said, the paints definitely have to be thinner. He described it pretty well. I usually thin my paint by first pouring some into an old film container or an old prescription medicine bottle. When I add the thinner, I’ll usually eyeball the ratio of 3 parts paint to 1 part thinner. Again, it’s nothing scientific, it’s just eyeballed.
After stirring it for a bit, I’ll take the mixing stick (usually an old length of sprue) and touch it to the side of the container. It should, as Pawel stated, run down fiarly easily and leave a translucent run of paint as it flows downward. If light isn’t penetrating the paint run, then the paint is still too thick. I then keep adding a couple drops of thinner and keep checking until it finally looks thinned out.
Don’t worry about OVER thinning it. You can always add a couple more drops of paint if need be. Perhaps one of the most important things you can do is to test the paint out first on a paper towel so you can see how well the paint flows out of the airbrush. If the paint is too thick and clogging up your AB, then you can always dump the paint back in the mixing bottle and then run some thinner though your AB to clear the clog out.
Eventually you’ll get the hang of how the paint should look and feel when it’s ready to be airbrushed. Another thing to keep in mind is, as I had mentioned, airbrushing is not an exact science. I’ve been using one for maybe ten years and there are so many others who have been using one for FAR longer than that. In spite of all that, I STILL have the occasional hiccup with it. Everyone does so don’t get frustrated. You WILL get the hang of it with experience.
Best wishes!
Eric
PS. As for the canopy, you’ll never mess one up if you use white glue. A little trick I learned is that if you paint the edge of the clear part (where the glue will go) black, then it’ll make the part look much better after the glue dries. You won’t get that shiny reflective property from the dried glue along the edge. It’s hard to explain but give it a try and I think you’ll see what I mean.
I find priming helps make the paint more tolerant to variations in thinning ratio. Over bare plastic, overthinned paint gets very blotchy. Over a good primer the paint can be thinned considerably more without suffering other than needing more coats. I use Testors enamel and thin anywhere from 50/50 to 40/60 paint/thinner.
I doubt your airbrush is ruined, a careful teardown and cleaning should do the trick
Hello, Peter. All the advice you are getting is on the money. My first attempt at air brushing was not pretty You definitely want to make sure your paint is thin enough. I usually find that eye-balling a 50/50 mix gets me pretty close to the desired thickness. Unless I have a lot to do and need to worry about color matching, I usually just mix my paint in the metal air brush cup. I have a detachable siphon feed one. Pour in the thinner and then add the paint (it mixes easier that way and doesn’t clog up the siphon tube with pure paint), stir, and pull the stirrer across the top edge of the cup. If it’s pretty thin running back down into the cup, then it seems good enough. I haven’t clogged up my air brush since! Spray a couple bursts onto some paper before starting to spray the model to clear out any problems and then get to it. Air pressure is the other issue. That’s a little trickier for me. And I doubt that you ruined your air brush, but a serious cleaning session may be in your future. It was for me. 
Welcome to FSM.
i dont think you have to use thinner in an airbrush. i just put the paint straight into the cup and it works.
You are joking, right? What paint are you using that allows that?
[:O] And at what pressure setting?!?!?
He must be painting with 2% milk!
i have a basic air pump… its small and has no storage tank I cant adjust the settings but i believe it pumps at 10 or 15 Psi
i took it apart and the inside is caked with paint pretty thick… i used some thinner to try to clean it out… i could barley get the needle out with out bending it. I’m not really to worried about that air brush i just don’t want that to happen to my Iwata that was expensive. lol
okay thanks for the advice… one more question… is there a line of decent water based or acrylic paints… I’m quite nervous using enamels now lol… id rather not take the chance of messing up my air brush it was just to expensive lol…
Tamiya is excellent acrylic. and cleans up easy with water or windex. Tamiya is tough with hand brushing though, better for airbrush. hand brushing I like to use the Warhammer GamesWorkshop acrylics. They are expensive, and a bit of a rip off, but I hate to admit they work really well. Also water based. This day and age what we know about cancer and health issues, you really shouldn’t use enamels anymore. They are not worth the dangers.
The Iwata isn’t going to clean itself any more than the other brush. You can use the first as practice cleaning before you gum up the Iwata. Wearing a mask, use lacquer thinner and really soak it. Then manually wipe it all down thoroughly.
Acrylic model paints, contrary to popular belief, are not water based. They are water soluble when they are a liquid, but once dry pose significantly greater problems being removed than do enamels.
Like any tool, or firearm, take it home, clean it, put it away clean.
Not be a contrarian, but this is an over-alarmist attitude in my opinion. I don’t believe the minute quantities of enamel (solvent/oil-based paint) that we use to paint the typical scale model present much of a health hazard. I was a professional painter for many years and used many gallons of alkyd enamel, not to mention epoxies and lacquers. We used respirators when spraying said coverings but I was an expert at brushing that enamel and the only ill effect I experienced was a powerful hunger after brushing(sans respirator) it all day. [;)] Believe me, my experience tells me that alykd enamel is a much better paint that acrylic latex enamel in almost every aspect. I love the smell of fresh enamel; it smells like, like “victory”, lol. (with apologies to Col. Kilgore!) Well, maybe it smells like “quality”.
I’m not a “fraidy cat” about using enamel for a model plane. I paint with a small fan directing any “fumes” away from me, my concession to its lethality. I feel like the benefits of enamel far out-weigh any ill effects possible from a few ounces of paint. [*-)] If you are too frightened to use it, that’s fine, stick with acrylics; we all have decisions to make in life. I’ll take that “chance” and feel comfortable with it. Ymmv…
Gary
I use the two percent milk consistency as a base line.
As for cleaning a clogged/gummed up brush, take it apart carefully, soak the parts in a strong solvent (the metal parts only lol) like MEK in extreme cases, but usually lacquer thinner, acetone, or an especially long soak in regular thinner. Use cotton swabs and pipe cleaners wet and dry to scrub the parts from there.
Hope this helps
A couple more thoughts. One nice thing about enamel is that there are solvents that will easily dissolve dried enamel. If paint thinner is not doing a good job, use lacquer thinner. However, there are indeed more safety and health issues with lacquer thinner than with paint thinner.
It sounds like you have not done a lot of airbrushing. In the painting forum when someone asks for help with a new airbrush, or using a new paint, or similar things, frequent advise is to practice before using on a model. Depending on your airbrush, most are pretty hard to really damage with the solvents we are using. Trashing a good model is something else. People use various plastic materials for practice- you can find many household items, like the remnants of blister packs, to use as practice plastic after removing the item it encased.