mineral spirits?????

I used to use a lot of mineral spirits for thinning paint and cleaning my airbrush but found that a lot of enamels would start to break down in the bottle after exposure to mineral spirits and the cleaning action was only so/so. Now I use Lacquer thinner for my enamels to thin and clean brushes with. I also use it for my airbrush as a thinning agent, cleaner and preuse lubercant. The biggest drawback to the stuff is the smell, you must use good ventilation or an adaquate mask so you don't fry any brain cells. I've never had an issue with it causing damage to the plastic but then I never have doused a piece of plastic in the stuff. It does give the enamel paints a great bite and is the only thing to use if you work with any lacquers like Alclad.

And a question for you LilBear, where does the name come from? My wife goes by Bear from her Cherokee heritage.

LilBear, when you're thinking "Mineral Spirits" think Testors/Modelmaster enamel thinner (big square can). It's the same stuff. You can use it to thin enamels paint only. In addition to being a great general purpose enamel thinner, mineral spirits has incredible attraction to the nooks and cranies of the model making it great for dark washes (with some dark brown, dark grey or black added). It gets sucked into whatever channels it can find and travels along with great speed which is exactly what you want when darkwashing. Your plastic part virtually explodes with the dark wash highlight. I know of no better thinner for dark washes.

Finally, of all the effective enamel thinners mineral spirits is the most gentle. This means that while turpentine or nitro are the most ruthless cleaners of your paintbrushes & aibrushes, when you spill some enamel onto surface where it doesn't belong (part of the model or even your living room furniture!) you should always use mineral spirits to cleanup. Turpentine and nitro can damage underlying paint very severely, even if it's ancient paint.

Besides alcohol (for acrylic paints) mineral spirits is the only other mandatory thinner you need to paint your models properly. I still keep a big can of nitro to thin my last bottle of Testors Dull Cote (clear lacquer varnish) but even that will be soon phased out by acrylic clear varnish also from Testors.

There's quite a lot of trial and error chemistry involved in proper model finishing, these are very complex and curious substances we deal with. You'll make friends with them with some practice although I admit my beginnings were extremely frustrating.

Swanny Hey Hey,
Thanks a bunch for the info. Lacquer thinner was another runner up, but I was leaning towards the mineral spirit (well my old man's opinion! LOL). So now I think I'm going to go with the lacquer thinner for thinning and cleaning. But

Thanks to Monster Zero I'm still gonna get a small container of mineral spirits too. Can't wait to try out a mineral wash. Hey what ratio of mineral spirits and color should I use?

Anyway Swanny
My great great grandmother on my fathers' side was full blooded Cherokee. I don't know much about her. I actually have a bit of a fascination with indian Culture. But it wasn't the reason I use lilBear even though there is a resemblance to what I feel my spirit animal could be. The name honors the best little creature that runs around my house and sleeps in my bed. My 7 year old minature Chinese Shar-Pei. She has many names that all end in Bear, except maybe "poopy-butt get in here. Right now!!!" She has the cutest face even when she's on the toilet (lawn). Honeybear, sugarbear, goldiebear, angelbear even lilBear.
We have such a great bond that I borrowed one of her nicknames. Goodness, I could go on and on about how wonderful she is but one of the neatest things about her is that she is a minature (which I didn't even know existed when I got her) I thought she would get to be 40-50 lbs (males 45-55) She stay at 26lbs, to this day 7 years later people Still think she is a puppy. Shar-Pei 's Rock!!!
Thanks again for the great advice.
Cheers!!!