Best Paint for a newbee

First of all, welcome to the forum asylum---errr----family! Glad to see you back into the hobby.

Tamiya is a very good acrylic paint to use for your aircraft. I've never encountered any problems using it. Thinning has never been a problem, either. I usually use plain old rubbing alcohol (70% isoprpopyl and water). Unfortunately, I've never heard of Xtracrylix, so I can't offer an opinion.

I used Pactra on some old armor models I did years ago. It's probably some of the finest pigmented stuff I've ever sprayed, and because of that was probably the best paint I've ever used (I used their enamel line). Still wish it was around.

You don't say what the Testor's is. Read the label. They might be enamel or acrylic. Interestingly, I've opened some of the old (10+years) small enamel bottles of Testor's and the paint is still fit to use!

Once again, welcome!
Gip Winecoff

Styrene,

Thanks for the comment. As to my old jars of paint...they are about 25 - 30 yrs old and they're enamels. Mom and Dad payed for those.

wow

I like tamiya tons, maybe because it's extremely popular and pretty easy to use in my badger 155. just don't thin it with water. I have this problem where the paint keeps evaperating until it's almost 0. this is within a week after i buy it.

I don't like humbrol enamals at all.

Tamiya Acrylics are very good acrylic paints and I've used them ever since. They cover well and are a joy to airbrush, easy to clean, too. Many modelers though don't like their flat black and metallic paints ("flaky" finish in the case of metallics) and so you may want to steer clear of these colors. Also, depending on what a/c you'll be modeling, you may find the Tamiya Acrylic color range limited, say, when you need the correct shade of RLM 76 or Barley Gray. But of course, you can refer to the mixing recipes found in many sites in the net to make your own desired color.

Another good acrylic paint is the Gunze Sangyo Hobby Color acrylic range. It has a wider color selection and a lot of its paints are formulated to FS, BS, RLM, and other standards. It's thinnable with water, alcohol, and acrylic thinner (e.g., Gunze Sangyo, Tamiya). I use it a lot and it works just as well as Tamiya's acrylics. Hope this helps.

By the way, to the forum!

Cheers,
onyan

Welcome to the forum Lopper.

I read the review of the Xtracrylix paints in SAM, and they sound quite good.

I have used, Tamiya, Gunze, Model Master, Vallejo, and Lifecolour acrylics, and in my opinion Gunze are the best in terms of quality and colour range, closely followed by Tamiya, same quality, limited colour range. The Vallejo gives a great finish, but I found it somewhat fragile, while the Model master appears to be pretty good too. The Lifecolour is OK, but the pigment is no where near as fine as the first four.

I wouldn't worry too much about only using paints from one range, as I use paints from all of the above depending upon my needs. For example Gunze do an RLM 79, but this is the darkesr shade, not the lighter shade, 79a which Model Master do. The main thing is only to mix paints from the same manufacturer.

Hope this helps.

Karl

I agree with Karl, any of the names mentioned in this topic have been tried and true to a good many people here. I tend to use Tamiya and Model Master (a newer testors brand than you have) because they are more available to me in my area, but also have used an individual bottle here and there of some of the other brands listed with excellent results...

In each line of paints I have always found one color or two that didn't work as good as the same color in another brand that I had tried before, but for the most part you can't go wrong with a good many of the brands out there today....

the only 'real' way to find out the best paint for you is to try.

Try the different paints, each range will have colours for different uses even if it is supposed to be the same colour.

Example:
Once companies silver might be less chromy than anothers but there will be a time when you want that specific luster/tint.

As others have mentioned not all companies cover all the colours, so they will tell you to mix the "missing" colours from their own when another company has the very colour you are after. Tamiya 1/32 Zero calls for mixing a colour for the wheel wells, Gunza carries it.

yeah, that's what I can't stand about revell and tamiya. mixing paints by percent. ie: grey is made up of 85.45018920837451092840983759283471024897234958234081724976% black and 14.20458712074610398240972045786129374619023874 % white

the Corsair I am doing right now calls for 3:1 flat green, 2:3 yellow or something like that.... I'm just using interior green... maybe it's not 100% accurate, who knows... maybe some groundcrew decided to customize it for some guy way back when... I'm not one to get in the way of possibilties haha...

If I were just starting out airbrushing it would be acrylics all the way. You will find over time that you will acquire a great deal of paint and thinners. It's an investment. I can reach in the drawer and get or be able to blend whatever I need. It's comfortable, I know how to thin this stuff down or mix it. It's the major reason I've never switched from enamel for air brushing. Investment and comfortability. Besides, Victory is the smell of lacquer thinner in the morning........ G.L.

I tend to use Model Master Acrylics thinned with Future, tried it once never went back. You get a rock hard paint finish and it smells good too. Don't try it with Tamiya though doesn't work.

I say, go for tamiya. Easy to use. my two cents

Thanks everybody for all of your suggestions !