Last night I airbrushed Testors Model Master Acryl for the first time, and I had mixed results. I was spraying gloss white and basically,it didn’t stick very well. I have a basic, external mix, single action airbrush, but I was pretty happy with the spray pattern I was getting. I thinned the paint, trying for “the consistency of milk” with the Testors acryl thinner (I know I could use other, cheaper stuff, but this is my first time using this paint, so I thought I’d play it safe).
Anyway, I was spraying the inside of the air intakes on the Monogram 1/72 F-4J I’m working on. I think I was able to get a pretty good dust coat, but if I stayed on the piece a little too long, I got paint pooling (not running, just collecting at the bottom of the piece). I’m thinking that I may have thinned too much and not been patient enough to do several light coats.
Still, I previously sprayed good old Testors square bottle enamels, and they clung to the model (cockpit) without a problem at all. Are acrylics really this tough to use? I’m going to work with the mixture of paint and thinner and maybe make a thicker mix, but does anyone have any other hints?
I also had the same problems with flat and gloss whites. For some reason they would not stick to plastic. I now apply a primer prior to spraying them and it works great. I never was able to solve the problem without the primer.
Acrylics need some ‘tooth’ to grab onto so you need to roughen the surface of what you are painting to get them to stick.
Since you are spraying inside of an intake it would be dificult to do that. As berny13 said spraying a primer first would help because primers are a flat finish which does have some ‘tooth’ to it for the paint to adhere to. You could use any flat paint you have actually and accomplish the same thing.
Well, I had problems with gloss and flat acrylic white. All other colors would stick but was easy to damage. When I use acrylics now, I always use a flat gray primer. It allows the acrylic paint to stick better and is more durable.
With light color acrylics primer is a must, and several light coats will probably be required. Try a flat white primer and build up the color coats slowly.
Thanks. I’m going to experiment and see if the flat light gull grey will stick, and I’ll use that as my primer if it does. Otherwise, what do you recommend for a primer?
Once I take care of these pesky intakes, I can seal them up, mask off the cockpit, and paint the darned plane.
Those intakes can be tough to paint without getting runs in the paint. Do it slowly in coats until covered. I remember spraying the intake on a 1/72 scale Testors F-16 with Model Master white and I had a small puddle inside in nothing flat. [:I]
It’s a pain to sand and repaint inside of those things. Haha