Paint

ROFL!! A 14 year old thread revived.....

I have had great luck with Tamiya accryrlics thinned with windshield washer, when Gunze Sangyo was a popular accrylic, I found the windshield washer to also work perfect. I havent tried it on Vallejo, nor do i think I will. I buy the Vallejo thinner and have it. My main paints as of late are usually Tamiya, but I find myself slowly using more Vallejo.

I have always been impressed at local and regional meets by how folks can get similar finishes with many types of paint.  I have decided there is no super advantage to any one type of paint- proper techniques can make any of them work.

I am partial to Testors enamels myself, but for gloss enamels I had to make a drying box to eliminate the long drying times.  But I can sure get a nice gloss.  Since most WW2 military aircraft have flat finishes, I find all three types of paint- lacquers, acrylic, and enamel work pretty much the same.  On natural metal finishes, I really like Alclad.

Flat finish aircraft still need to have at least some areas glossed up before applying decals.  Glossing these areas on flat paint is worth a whole thread in itself!

I had really good luck with Testors Model Master

Acrylic line of paints. Thinned with distilled water.

I wash all plastic model parts with soapy warm

water then let air dry. Then I prime all plastic

model parts using their Acrylic grey primer.

For airbrush cleaners I use their Acrylic cleaner.

I use a BD-130 airbrush that has a .3mm needle.

I prefer Tamiya thinned with their x-20 thinner.

I too have recently changed over to mostly acrylics, and they do vary a lot. I think it's always wise to use the manufacturer's thinner first, but the Testor's Acryl and Polly Scale are pretty flexible about thinners, water, alcohol, and Acryl thinner all work. I use Acryl thinner with Tamiya paint and never have had a problem, but Gunze Sangyo is fussy about thinners and overcoating in my experience.

I switched almost exclusively to acrylic paints several years ago and, once I got the hang of them, I could safely say I'd never go back to enamels.

The key to how well a paint works in your airbrush depends on what you thin it with. Some brands aren't particularly picky when you thin them, yet others are formulated in such a way that you pretty much have to buy the specialized airbrush thinner made by that manufacturer to get the paint to thin out and spray decently.

I've had very good success with Testor Acryl paints thinned with distilled water. Pactra also works very well thinned the same way, but its nearly impossible to find anymore as far as I know (pity, it was one of the best acrylic model paints in my opinion)

I've had very limited success with either Tamiya or Gunze Sangyo paints being thinned with anything outside their specialized thinners.

I can't speak for enamels as I haven't used them in some time, but I imagine similar logic applies to them as well.

Good luck!

I really like the ScaleMaster and other acrylics! I use them almost exclusively (except for metal finishes) and have had great success.

There is more info about them on my site here: http://www.naplak.com/modeling/painting_articles.htm

And they are sooooo easy to clean up after too!

I didn't actually read the article (don't know if it discusses the best paints), but this article might be worthwhile reading if you haven't read it yet.

ABCs of airbrushing

That would depend on the type of paint you would like to use. Water or oil based, both have advantages. I have tried water based paints in the past and I always had problems getting the paint to flow out of the brush just right. Either it was to thick or to thin. They were easy to clean up but, I just didn't like them. So, I started using Model Master paints (oil based). Most of the time I can take the paint strait from the bottle and it will go on very easy with no or very little thinning. As I got better with an air brush I started using different brands of oil based paints.
I recommend trying a couple different types to find what works best for you.
Good luck,
Pat