Best basecoat for yellow

Hey Don I know how you feel I spent 40 years as a model railroader when Floiquil done away with there lacquer based paints I was like a lost puppy. I have found white or gray make the best undercoat for bright colors like yellows,reds,blues etc.              Mark                                                                                                                

@Don, I thought of you last night, I broke out two old bottles of Pactra that I still have in my paint box, "Suntan", in the little square bottle with the Pactra teardrop embossed on it, and a larger, round jar of "Skin Tone".  Both are over 30 years old, and both are still good (though "Skin Tone" took a mess of stirring to mix the pigment and carrier again).  I've got a bottle of Testor's enamel "Copper" in the little square bottle, that's even older, and still good.  I use it for gold braid and brass buttons on my toy soldiers

@SuppressionFire--I'll second that about Testor's yellow, it's almost like it's formulated for home improvement use and not modeling.  It goes on thick but dries/cures unevenly.  I used it on a 1/72 P-36 cowling, and you can see the added thickness.  Thanks for the tip on Krylon, I'm going to try it.

Gradlock

As usual you guys are a wealth of info. 

 

Don: Any particular brand of those yellow primers you can tell us about to try to hunt some down or are they already kaput?

They are pretty much gone. I think it was about fifteen years ago they were scrapped as carcinogens.  I think through some aircraft supply places you can get some in cans to mix your own spray, but I understand it is hard to get it.  It was used primarily for priming aluminum, and folks have developed chemical conversion coatings instead, which can be painted over with regular primers.

Even before the outlawing of this stuff the yellow was harder to get than the apple green stuff.  Seems to me that Rustoleum used to have a yellow  zinc chromate primer.

If OOC (out of can) is your style stay away from Testor's yellow enamel in a can, I have had nothing but bad luck with it. Try Krylon 'Sunbeam' Its plastic compatible and lays down like glass over Testor's flat white enamel.

As usual you guys are a wealth of info. 

Don: Any particular brand of those yellow primers you can tell us about to try to hunt some down or are they already kaput?

There are some very light grey primers available.  These are almost as good as a white primer but may take an extra coat.

Of course, when the yellow zinc chromate primers were available these worked well- sad to see them go.

I just struggled with this on the Raiden (Jack) i am working on....I ended up using Tamiya IJN grey as the base primer since I was using it as the bottom color anyway and it worked great. The yellow went on nicely with thin coats and had good coverage...no edge pooling and opaque centers.

Good luck.

Carlos

Thanks for the replies guys, especially about using the white and/or grey primer depending on how bright I want the colors to be. 

Same here, I always use white as a base coat for yellow & red.

Regards,  Rick

I use a white primer base for yellow and for red, especially if I want it to be a bright shade, like lemon yellow tail markings for pre-war USN aircraft.  If it's a darker or duller shade of yellow or red, I'll use my regular shade of medium gray primer.

...yellow...

Nevermind. Searching is your best friend.

Got several answers at once from this post. 

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