Lacquer Thinner Problems

Don Stauffer

I use condiment jars such as relish and salsa, much of which still comes in glass jar with metal top. My modeling friends also occasionally give me baby food jars.

Relish jars are the perfect size, and they even fit in the tub of my ultrasonic cleaner.  I always have 3 with MEK in them (1 for the ultrasonic cleaner, 1 for general brush/paint mixer cleaning, and 1 for clean MEK to thin decanted Tamiya primer with), and 1 with clean 99% alcohol to thin Tamiya acrylic paints with.  Can't go wrong with glass jars with metal lids. 

I buy lacquer thinner by the gallon and store a few ounces at a time in a glass jar on my bench. I do the same with paint thinner.

I use condiment jars such as relish and salsa, much of which still comes in glass jar with metal top. My modeling friends also occasionally give me baby food jars.

Just don't recycle those glass jars.

I use empty dishwashing soap bottles, one for lacquer thinner and another for paint thinner. I've been using the same bottles for at least 5 years and they've held up well. It's easy to get a small amount of thinner from them without any mess. 

Get yourself some dropper bottles made of LDPE (low density poly ethylene). Should be stamped into the bottom of the bottle somewhere with recycle code 4. They are pretty solvent resistant. I got mine at the Container Store. I use it to store paint thinner and lacquer thinner for years without a problem. However, Humbrol thinners seems to dissolve it very slowly.

TheModeler

Is the thinner supposed to dissolve plastic and put a strange effect on skin?

Yes and yes.  Try not to get it on your skin, it will pretty much take all of the oils out of your skin and leave them a nice, chalky white color in random patches.  If you get it on your skin, just use a little hand lotion after that and your hands will be good as new.  Instead of a dropper bottle, what I would recommend is to transfer some of the lacquer thinner to a glass jar for your bench-top(I think I keep my bench-top lacquer thinner in an old dill weed jar).  For transferring solvents like that, I use a silicone funnel...you can get a set of those in the kitchen section of a Walmart.  Then, you can either use a purpose-made plastic paint pipette (which are surprisingly solvent resistant), or a small glass syringe to transfer precise amounts of the lacquer thinner to whatever you're mixing paint and thinner in.  For mixing paint and thinner, I just use ordinary Dixie bathroom cups.  The wax that lines those resists pretty much any of the paints and solvents used in modeling, with the exception of ammonia-based paints like the Model Master Acryl line.  Dixie cups do just fine with lacquer thinner, mineral spirits, alcohol, and even MEK.

Paint thinner is not lacquer thinner.  Most paint thinner is turpentine,  Lacquer thinner is usually a mix of stronger solvents such as acetone, mek and such

Klean Strip lacquer thinner is medium dry rate thinner. It's a fairly hot thinner in that it melts certain plastics and paints. And while it's medium dry it's still fast enough to give that cool effect on skin.To me it works but I feel for my environment it could still be a bit slower, just a little retarder in it would be nice but I'm too cheap to buy the retarder. That said, sometimes I mix in a little Xlene which has a slightly slower evaperation rate than their LT alone. All that said, unless it's acrylic paint and even then sometimes I use glass mixing bottles ( they're either Testors bottles or Badger bottles I forget which but it's a set of 6 clear bottles with screw on lids).

There are many lacquer thinner compounds out there. The better ones are low on alcohol and acetone but those are common components in LT, especially the cheaper ones..

Stay away from the Klean Strip green can, that's complete junk.

Don't know their color coding on the can labels, but thinner is usually graded as fast, medium or slow as to evaporation rate.  Sounds like you got the fast stuff.  Thinner will feel cold as it evaporates on skin, and will leave what looks like a white deposit on skin.  Not really a deposit, just the oils in the skin have been pulled out.

Have used it to clean my hands of grease, paint, glues, resin and urethane for years in the auto body/paint trade.  Not recommended for that nowdays.

And yeah, it will melt styrofoam and some plastics in a heartbeat.