So I was up at HobbyTown today and I was talking to one of the people who actually is a glue sniffer there, and I was asking a question about thinning out MM Acrylics cause I having had good luck with MM acrylics, I don’t know if it’s the airbrush, or the paint, but he said something about using a tea strainer to strain out any impurities in the paint. Anyone ever heard of that or done that?
While Pactra paints were still around, that was pretty common advice at my LHS. I don’t recall exactly what the circumstances were (bad batches, old stock, just plain nasty brand, etc.), but you would occasionally find debris floating around in your paint, like large clumps of congealed pigments that wouldn’t break down in thinner or large particles of paint that had set up and cured in the jar. At the time, it was sound advice because any of that stuff would ruin an airbrush session rather quickly.
I think I have that with my Vallejo Surface primer. It’s not coming out right. I don’t know if my airbrush just doesn’t like vallejo but it’s coming out blotchy not smooth, it’s almost like it was frozen and then thawed out.
That’s the trouble with Vallejo and other brands with those dropper style bottles, you can’t stir the paint in them. You have to pull the dropper top off and stir it using a tiny motorized paint stirrer, or make your own.
You can fabricate a motorized stirrer for dropper bottles by cutting the end off a battery operated milk frother and leaving just a small tail of the end, about 1/4" so it will fit the bottle. Really makes a diffrence for the paint. I love vallejo paint now that it is mixed properly. I used the mixing balls before and it helped, but the motorized stirrer is like night and day better.
I have the big 60Ml bottle of the surface primer. I also have the paint mixer from Micromark that works like a charm.