Also you can always strip old paint jobs. I soak in purple power, I call it the purple pond and use the back side of a butter knife and a dedicated hard tooth brush after 24-48 hours soaking in the bath. But some here seem to get faster results using a 91% isopropyl alcohol bath.
If you go to Tamiyas website pretty sure you will find their suggested thinner for brushing their acrylics is retarder. I could be wrong and they may have changed the data but last I knew that was it. Not to argue with anyone, we all find our own paths in these things and if you find a better way then hallejuah.
Yup. 91% will strip any plastic parts of paint, right down to the bare plastic. With a 20-30 minute bath in that, along with a semi-submerged, gentle scrubbing with a cheap electric toothbrush, it can be stripped and ready for new paint in about an hour. I’m actually using 99% now, and its a little faster. I’ve used this method on pieces that had been painted 25 years prior to that, with a couple of them actually having been primed with aircraft grade zinc chromate out of a rattle can. No chemical change to the plastic either, as can happen with the oven cleaner method I see mentioned here and there. Heh…I always cringe when I see someone talking about using that method. Its almost always followed by a “Wow, this plastic has become really brittle over the years” post, when it was actually the oven cleaner that made that happen the day it was used.
Just remember when stripping with alcohol to use isopropyl alcohol only. If you use denatured alcohol, you’re taking a big gamble on the other, assorted ingredients that were added to it to make it taste bad so people don’t drink it. They put lacquer thinner, acetone, xylene, and sometimes even MEK in that stuff. Isopropyl is always going to be just alcohol and water in some ratio.
When I brush it by hand, I use two methods to thin it.
One is to use a small jar of the thinner, to pick up the color from a palette (usually just the inside of the paint jar lid, and dip it in the thinner, then apply it to the piece. It levels itself out for me.
The other is to use a proper palette, and to mix a drop of the thinner and the paint, and then apply it to the piece.
And I work with small amounts, too. But I do that with my water-based acrylics, too-a small amount of paint, on a wet palette for thinning. It really goes a long way.