Looking for Gunze Sanyo paints

I believe Sprue Bros. has a good selection of Gunze enamels, but they say the water based acrylic line is no longer available.  Weird.

Why bother with a paint line that is so hard to get? Use Tamiya or Model Master, at least they are available.

Gunze has discontinued their acrylic Aqua line IIRC.  The Mr Color lacquer line is still very much available, though, and IMHO the finest airbrushing hobby paints made when used with the leveling thinner.  They're not hard to get at all as long as you don't mind getting them via mail (and live in the US... I've heard they're iffy to get into Canada due to being solvent based.)

Hobbywave has by far the best stock, price, and shipping of any vendor I've found yet as long as you're buying at least half a dozen paints or so.  They're practically a Gunze storefront.  They do a flat single rate ($12) for up to something like 50 bottles.  If you're just buying one or two bottles the best way to do so in the US I've found (so far) is either SprueBrothers or Ebay.  SB has very poor stock levels at any one time for Gunze stuff in general, though.  

Pick out at least half a dozen paints you need, plus a bottle of leveling thinner, Surfacers / Dissolved putty if you need them, and Hobbywave will be the cheapest by far with the flat rate shipping.  I wish they carried more than just Gunze stuff (like Tamiya kits and supplies) and I'd hardly ever buy from SB.  That shipping deal is just too good to beat.

Montague:  I would use Tamiya if I knew the paint conversions from Gunze to Tamiya.  Do you know where a good conversion chart is online?

I checked out Hobbywave.  Thanks for the advice.  I saw the Mr. Hobby line is Surfacers and hopefully you or someone can clarify something.  There is Mr. Surfacer 1000, Mr. Surfacer 1200, and there is a Mr. Primer Surfacer 1000.  What is the difference?  I am not sure totally what the 1000 or 1200, thinking it is whether it is roughness gauge.  What is the difference between Mr. Surfacer Primer and Mr. Surfacer?  Aren't they both primer?

It's roughness guage.  The 500 is fairly thick with large grains, the 1000 quite a bit finer, and the 1200 the finest.  I've got all 3, and use the 500 fairly often for small seam and stair-step filling.  I honestly have a hard time telling the difference between 1000 and 1200.  The Mr Surfacer Primerin a bottle is a fairly new product from what I've been able to find out, and I don't know much about it.  It seems they changed the formula some, perhaps to increase it's 'stick'... looking online shows mixed results.  I'd stick with the regular surfacer bottles plus thinner, or the rattle-can if you've a large project.  The Base White 1000 is the same as the regular 1000, but the color is a VERY strong white that's made to cover any base color you spray it over with no bleed-through, and it's very good at it.

They're some of the best primers made, but must by heavily thinned for airbrushing.  Use the Leveling thinner.  Another product I've gotten a lot of milage out of lately is the Mr Dissolved Putty.  It's exactly what it sounds like... essentially Squadron White putty that's already thinned out to a thick soup.  Perfect for filling pesky shallow mold sinks, or major join problems that the Surfacers would take too many applications to fix.

Ahh, I remember the good ol days when Squadron used to stock the good stuff. Sadly, no more.

Gunze Aqueous is available from Luckymodel, Super-Hobby, e-bay, or MDC. All great webstores. They are worth the hunt.

Interesting timing... Sprue Brothers just put a notice up on thier Facebook page last night stating that they'd just received a 'huge' shipment of Gunze Mr Color paints and that most colors were now in stock.  So if you just need a few bottles and therefore can't take economic advantage of Hobbywave's $12 shipping deal, SB is going to be the place to go.

www.paint4models.com/.../paintconversionchart20100101d.htm

Ultimate paint conversion chart

Good News if you are a fan of the Gunze Aqueous line.   I read a thread on another site in which the the person claims they will soon be available in the U.S. once again.  They were never discontinued, they have not been imported because they would not re label to meet the new U.S. regulations (so I have read).

Lets hope this is all true.

it IS true

while that person was posting that the Gunze paints were Coming,,,,,they were already on the Sprue bros home page as newly arrived

they are on there right now,,,,,,it must not have been a 100% restock, but, a lot of both Gunze ranges are on that site now

Rex

Hmmm, still see very little aqueous paints at Spruebrothers, and still saying discontinued on the website. Am I missing something?

my bad, I answered the Original Post, where he asked about getting the enamels as the primary choice, with the Aqueous as his secondary choice

SB has since taken down the bit about the Gunze restock in their news section on the left of the entry page (I wasn't aware they took any of those down, I thought those stayed up there)

Rex

Ok gotcha. Always perks me up when I hear of better availability of the aqueous line.

Montague, thank you for this conversion chart.  There used to be a website many years ago that was a little better than this one.  Of course I may not be using this correctly.  I thought the other conversion was on Swanny's website and it was from Stockholm or something that list a color for each manufacturer or a close match, e.i., Gunze Aqueous H24 Orange Yellow, FS9999 and then the close match in Tamiya.  I like TAMIYA paints and have not build a plastic model in years because I usually build RC aircraft then spend all my free time flying but now during winter months I would like to get back into building some WWI and WWII warbirds.

Let's clear something up here.  There are two kinds of Gunze paint.  There is the Aqueous Hobby Color line and Mr. Color line.  Aqueous Hobby color was water based and Mr Color is solvent based.  Mr. Color is NOT an enamel.  

Aqueous Hobby Color is being discontinued (if it hasn't already) in favor of Mr. Color.  The pigments are the same but the carrier is different.  Even though you can still find Aqueous Hobby Color in online stores the color selection is very limited.  Its probably just left over stock.  You'll see quickly that the most popular/used colors are very very hard to find.

AHC labels their colors with an H and Mr. Color uses a C.  For example, Light Ghost Grey in AHC is H308 and in Mr. Color its C308.

Mr. Color paint can be thinned with their own Mr Color thinner (or Leveling Thinner) or lacquer thinner.  I recommend the Leveling thinner.  It is fantastic paint.  It dries to the touch in just a few minutes.

the Mr Color line is an Acrylic Lacquer paint,,,,,,explaining why it is not an enamel, and also explaining why it is an Acrylic that is not compatible with conventional "acrylic paint" methods