Help, paint is rubbing off...with water!

Perhjaps a stupid question, but did you clean the plastic first?  I know I've had some, where despite cleaning and priming, I did not get a good adhesion (bad batch of plastic?) and had paint lift.  Could also have been that the paint layers weren't cured? I've never used aqua gloss, so I don't know how it would all react.

I did not clean the plastic, but the paint is not lifting, it is dissolving.  Good point about paint curing, I do not remember how long I waited for that.  The gloss coat had 24 hours.  Thanks for the response.

This may sound like a silly or stupid question but, are you Positive it was water? Did you accidentally dip the brush or decals in a water/alcohol mix?? I've heard of people messing up like that, grabbing the wrong bottle of this or that...I know I've done similar things, dipped the brush in laquer instead of water or vise versa...Thats all I got for ya man...

Not a silly question at all.  I wondered if I had something left in the brush, but then I got fresh water and a different brush and had the same results.  Maybe I will go back and start with fresh water again, and a q-tip, no way it would be contaminated.  

Maybe Tamiya paints don't like to be thinned with alcohol.  For their acrylics, I always use Tamiya X-20A thinner and have had no problems.

But Chuck isn't X-20A mostly alcohol too?

I AB'd some Tamiya over rattle-can primer yesterday, thinned with alcohol.  I will wait until tomorrow, 48 hours, to let it cure before gloss coating it.

Today I can rub the paint off easily with alcohol, which makes perfect sense, since it was thinned with alcohol.  I cannot get it to rub off with water.  It would appear the Aqua-gloss is having some affect on the finish.

Here is an update - I let the Tamiya paint on the CD/primer cure for 48 hours.  I then airbrushed 4 sections with 4 different gloss coats, Aqua-gloss, Microscale gloss, Model Master gloss, and Future.  The gloss coats have cured for something under 36 hours.

They all held up well, with Aqua-gloss and Microscale being maybe a tiny bit more resistant than the other two, but not enough to make any difference.

The Aqua-gloss is not hurt at all by water or mineral spirits.  So why did it wash away, and take the paint with it when I was applying decals with water?  I guess one of the mysteries of life :)  One thing for certain, I let the paint cure for longer in my experiment.

Anyway, I think I will gloss coat the P-40 again, and then try the decals again to see what happens.

...It was just your turn to have it from the modeling gods...

And GOD said:    "Repaint.... and thin no more!"

It happened again!  Apparently I do not learn.

Once again, Tamiya acrylic thinned with alcohol, and topped with Aqua Gloss (and tan color again).  Funny thing is, it does not happen everywhere on the kit, but where it does happen, the water acts like a solvent. The instant it hits the paint it starts fading it, and the paint rubs right off.

Only thing is, this time I am not sure how long I let everything cure.  I have spent more time on this kit than anything I have ever built before, so it should have had plenty of time to cure.

I am going to touch it up, let it cure again, and gloss coat again.

The modeling gods are not going to allow me to get cocky

Tamiya acrylics are alcohol-based. There is no way water can remove them once they are cured.

However, Aqua Gloss is water-based. Unless it's 100% cured, water will remove it.

It is definitely strange, and I cannot repeat it, but it went all the way through to the primer. I'm no chemist, but maybe something to do with the Aqua Gloss when it broke down?  It is just so incredible so see, an almost instant reaction to the water.  I am going to give the paint coat and the top coat extra cure time before trying decals again.