Tamiya woes . . . or is it just me?

Are you mixing acrylics w/ enamels?

You're not really doing anything wrong, it's just the nature of Tamiya's acrylic paints.

Tamiya acrylics are very susceptible to lifting when brushed over with fresh paint. Normally this is only a problem during painting as the paint "skins" very quickly and when you brush back over a partially dry area, it pulls it up in big limps. The way to avoid this is to thin the paint with about one part Tamiya thinner to three parts paint apply a light coat and resist the urge to re-coat immediately. Allow to cure at least overnight before applying the next coat.

Leaving your base coat for a week should have been sufficient time for it to cure. However, if your shading/highlighting processes involved extensive brushing, it may well "burn through".

Applying a Future coat is unlikely to help as it is an acrylic based product and is soluble in Tamiya thinner.

You can, if you wish, do your shading with oils or enamels - they will have no ill effect on Tamiya acrylics if the base is fully cured.

Nope.  Straight-up Tamiya acrylics.  Starting to think I should have gone enamels, though . . . 

Well, I'll give the oils a shot.  I purchased a fresh kit at the hobby shop last week, so we'll see what happens!

Thanks for the info, gang.

There are plenty of good acrylics for hand brushing, Tamiya is not one of them though. For hand brushing I've had good luck using Modelmaster Acryl, Pollyscale, Vallejo and Games Workshop. 

I have a whole drawer full of the Model Master stuff; it's what I used to use.  I wanted to try something new and exciting!  Well, I'm going to give some of the above posts a try.  I've read good things about oils.  I'll continue to use the Tamiya's in the future, but they'll be reserved for wings and hulls!

There's a new thread about acrylics and lacquer thinner: check it out. Trust me, if you don't mind using lacquer thinner, Tamiya is like a new paint. I don't brush with it, but it is significantly better with an airbrush - rather like Gunze Mr. Color. But it doesn't have that sweet water based security you'd get from a number of other paints like vallejo or life color.

Eric

Seconded or thirded or whatever with Tamiya and lacquer thinner.  I just had a bottle of Gunze's Mr. Color Leveling Thinner show up yesterday (mainly for use with Mr Surfacer 1200), and I'm eager to try it with Tamiya paints to see how it performs vs. their own lacquer thinner.

As for brushpainting with acrylics, I've had great experience with both Lifecolor and Vallejo. Though in the end I prefer Vallejo because it can be airbrushed like a dream as well. Just cut it 50/50 with Future. It's only weakness is that it doesn't go as "thin" as Tamiya can go, at least not well. I've thinned Tamiya as much as 9:1 thinner/paint for post-shading work without problems, but the Vallejo/Future alliance seems to start breaking down more around 4:1 or so.

I've had the same thing happen to me with Tamiya paints out of the bottle, though not with every bottle, and not with every color.  It appears to be a factor of the age of the paint, and perhaps the chemical makeup of the pigments used for this or that color.  So far, it's happened with flat black, flat flesh, and flat gray.  I've had the bottles of those colors for a long, long time, and they've thickened over time, without drying out.  When I want to use them, I add an eye dropper-full of ispropyl and mix it in thoroughly, then brush it on.  I only use those colors for details or small areas (a 1/32 or 1/48 face, for example), so I can get the thinned paint down quickly, without clumping.  Then I have to let the piece sit for at least 24 hours, before putting anything over the previous paint.

A million thanks, everyone!  I plan on this weekend being a kind of Paintapalooza at my house, so we'll see what happens.  Still not sure which direction I'm going to go; I hate to start over with another flavor of paint (ie, strip the whole thing down, etc), so I might press on and see what transpires with Tamiya's, oils, lacquers and, probably, a very big fan to blast all of the fumes away.

Thanks again!