orange peel..sucks

I've a feeling you're not mixing your paint properly. It looks a bit lumpy. Try a L-shaped piece of  metal rod or wire in a motorised mini-drill.

Or maybe you're stopping as you spray, causing a build-up of paint.

Hi Osher,

Interesting we should both be peeling oranges at the same time, 12, 000 miles apart in different hemispheres. It was warm today, the first really warm day of the year in Australia. I was shooting some Testor gloss white over Humbrol matt white undercoat, and I got an orange peel finish despite mixing the paint to company specs and backing off the pressure. I'm thinking of using a polishing kit to level it out, the coat itself looks plenty solid enough and it's an open contour without nooks and crannies...

Cheers,

TB379

Your MiG-15 there looks to be suffering from too thick a mix, though it's hard to tell exactly because of the photo quality. I say it's too thick because of the little chunks of paint I see down the side of the fuselage and the buildup on the side of the starboard wing's air fence.

Try thinning it up a bit and pulling away from the model a bit. Finally, are you airbrushing in even passes across the model, or are you spot-shooting?

Orange peel is the opposite, it's an occurence of little depressions among otherwise level paint. Go have Earl Scheib paint your car up some day and you'll get my drift.

Triarius wrote:

. Try a slight increase in air pressure, too, and check your thinning ratio.

Also you might try moving the AB a tad faster and even moving a touch farther away.  Also I might add to not try and use 1 coat of paint.  If Ive learned 1 thing is to apply as many thin coats as is needed than to apply 1 thick layer.