I am hand-painting my 1/72 Tamiya kit’s cockpit,smaller parts,etc. with Tamiya’s acrylics mixed in with some Vallejo Airbrush Flow Improver(a big THX to Eaglecash867!)and X-20A,which works well.I am painting the Body and other large parts with Tamiya Lacquer spraycans(I can’t afford an airbrush).
So the big question is,will Testors Dullcote/Glosscote Spraycan lacquers work over the smaller parts of the plane painted with acrylics?Because after doing some research,I hear that it will damage acrylic paints underneath.Does this apply only for water-based acrylics and not Tamiya’s unique alcohol-based acrylics,or is this just an overall myth?
I would love to hear an answer from you great members at the FSM Forums
I have done it with okay results. I am not sure why it works, but it does. I wonder if that stuff dries so fast it doesn’t have time to soften the paint much. I have also used glosscoat over acrylic lacquers and enamels. But you must wait till it is fully hardened, not just dry to the touch. Wait at least 24 hours.
I use DullCote over acrylics, including Tamiya’s, and water-based acrylics from Andrea, Vallejo, LifeColour, and the craft store brands. I have never seen any problems using it.
If you haven’t already, you might also want to have a look in the Painting forum, a little further down the page. There are probably some good posts about using DullCote there.
No issues for me either with rattle-canning Dullcote and Glosscote over Tamiya. Like Don said, it dries fast enough not to attack the paint, but you’re also not adding mechanical stress by physically touching it with a brush and that helps as well.
As the guys said you should be fine as long as you don’t hose it on. Back when I was younger and stupider in the '80s I did flood it on a couple models and it did craze and discolour the paint.
If you really want to be on the safe side Kylon does make latex varnishes in a can. I’d assume they’d be perfectly safe over any form of latex paint.
Testors Dullcoat over Testors MM Acrylics has been my standard operating procedure for over a decade with only one instance of a problem - and I don’t think it was related to the acrylic paint. I sprayed the dullcoat on a day with VERY high humidity - Ya don’t wanna do that.