Model Master paint REFUSES to mix... Help me?

How old was teh Intermediate blue?  Once it is opened I find MM enamel has a limited shelf life- only a few months.  And once it is mixed in an airbrush jar the shelf life is even worse than that.  It jells up and cannot be stirred or shaken to a uniform mixture. In spite of that, I love the stuff and it is my goto paint. I now buy fresh paint when I start a kit, at least for colors I will be airbrushing.

Sounds like you are really thinning your paint down, maybe too much. MM paint does not like to be thinned that much. I'm not sure if it is compatible with Tamiya lacquer thinner either.

I'm not expert on enamels, been many years since I've used them exclusively, but I also wonder about using Tamiya lacquer thinner with MM enamels.

In no way am I suggesting it's the wrong thing to do, more curious to learn if the two are compatible. If my memory is any good, I'm thinking I used Testers enamel thinner?

I'm also curious why you chose to lay down a black primer. Intermediate blue is relatively light in color, I would think trying to get good coverage with it over black primer would be challenging, at best.

Maybe so on the paint being thinned too much but the real reason I think is the black primer not allowing the blues to come out well. Grey primer would have been better IMO.

I vote for a possible incompatibility issue also. Forever I was taught that lacquer thinner and enamel do not play well together, in fact before I knew any better, I tried spraying lacquer flit can paint on an old enamel finish on metal. I cleaned it well, sanded it smooth and sprayed the lacquer. The areas that were sanded smooth accepted the lacquer OK, but at edges where I had sanded the chipped areas down to metal, were wrinkled.

I know some use lacquer thinner and enamel mixed routinely with no issues, but perhaps the Tamiya lacquer is just a bit "hotter" than what you find at the paint stores? And I think Nathan has the right idea, maybe thinned too much. I can thin Tamiya acrylic way thin, like maybe 3:2 thinner to paint and it works well, but for MM enamel I rarely thin more than 1:3 thinner to paint. I stick with paint store generic enamel thinner, works well with MM enamel.

Just thinking.

Patrick

Thanks for all the replies. I am still leaning toward possibly a bad paint, though. It was a new jar, but it doesn't make sense to me that if the thinner were the problem, why it wouldn't work with intermediate blue, but worked flawlessly with light gray and insignia white.

As for the thinner ratio, when I was shooting with a lower ratio than 50/50, the paint spattered coming out of the nozzle, and some of it was drying before it hit the surface. I experimented with everything from 10 to 25 psi.

It also performed just as poorly with the Testors thinner, which is specifically for the Model Master paints. I'm wondering if it wasn't fully sealed in the jar (maybe someone opened it at the store?) and something went bad.

This is the result I got with light gray on the same plane, shot one day earlier (temp/humidity was the same) and with the same thinner over the same black primer. This is actually black primer-> base coat -> 50% light gray/50% insignia white in the panel centers -> 70-80% thinned base color on top to blend.

I'm going to get a new jar of intermediate blue and will try that. For $3, it's not too much to experiment with. Hopefully I'll see better results.

Thanks again for all the replies. If I DO get the same results, maybe I'll have to try garden-variety thinner even over the Testors thinner.

-BD-

I've gotten new bottles of paints but those have been sitting on the shelf for a real long time. Sure fire way to tell is dust on bottle caps. I've taken back a few bottles of Gunze paints for exchange of same color (if he has them). Now I open the bottles to see how they look inside before buying them.

Patrick,

    I think that what you experienced with applying lacquer & enamel was mentioned in that article that I have a vague recollection of reading.  Certain paint types just do not play well together.  And that they should be applied in a certain order to get them to play as well as to be expected.

Brandon,

    Did you purchase it locally or online?  If you purchased it locally have you called the shop where you bought it to see if anyone else has had any problems with MM intermediate blue?  If not that might be an idea.  As if no one else has had a problem with the MM intermediate blue from that batch then it could very well be what you are doing and that the paint isn't bad.

Digital Cowboy

I agree, the lacquer paint wrinkled the feathered edges of the enamel. Where the harder cured enamel surface existed, just scuffed up a bit, it accepted the lacquer top coat OK.

I always wondered, if the sprayed lacquer could attack and wrinkle the enamel coat, how is it that reducing enamel with lacquer doesn't curdle it, or some other bad reaction?

I understand some feel reducing enamel with lacquer gives a better "bite" for adhesion, that makes sense. Although, using enamel to enamel mixes have not given me any lifting issues, and that could be my use of paint store enamel reducer, as opposed to the "hobby" paints, I imagine because it's a bit more aggressive, possibly.

One safe way to use lacquer over enamel that I found, is to use a "barrier," Floquil sold one years ago, I think for the RR modelers. Using it allowed the use of Floquil lacquer formulas to be safely sprayed over enamels, without stripping it off prior to spraying their paint. Now at the paint store I buy what's called a "sealer," spraying that over the enamel causes no reaction, and it will accept a lacquer paint to be sprayed then.

For the most part, I use lacquer thinner now for cleaning the airbrushes and cups only. Thanks for the input.

Patrick

Patrick,

    That all makes sense.  I'm also wondering if part of Brandon's problem is that after shooting acrylic paints through his airbrush that he didn't get it totally clean and has gotten some cross-contamination.