Please refresh my memory

I should clearify,  The pressure is 20 psi, when I press down on the airbrush's trigger. When the airbrush is at rest, the gauge reads 25 psi.

Firtst off, I'd thin the paint to about the consistency of 2% milk. That's probably about half thinner. Use 90% isopropyl or Tamiya thinner for this. If you use isopropyl, add a tiny drop of acrylic retarder—I'm assuming Tamiya acrylic, here.

Drop your pressure to 15 psi or so. Experiment. And PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE! 

I will drop the pressure to 15 and see how it goes.

I do not like to thin paint because you can not put the unused paint back in the bottle.

Tamiya is pretty thin. I will thin if I have to.

Thanks again for your help. 

zlee11 wrote:

I will drop the pressure to 15 and see how it goes.

15 PSI should be fine.  I have a Paasche H, and that is what I spray at.

zlee11 wrote:

I do not like to thin paint because you can not put the unused paint back in the bottle.

In my experience, that admonishment really applies only to enamels.  Once enamels have been thinned for airbrushing, they cannot be stored for long periods because the thinner will separate and the pigments and binders will clump up in the bottom of the jar and be utterly unusable.  No amount of mixing will help.

With acrylics, and I've observed this with both Tamiya and ModelMaster Acryl, the paint will separate just as with enamels, however unlike enamels, you can simply stir up the paint and it will paint as perfectly as the day it was thinned.  I have kept some highly thinned acyrlic mixtures for more than a year with no troubles.  The paint does separate, but before use, I stir it up and I'm good to go.

Recently I opened a bottle of MM Acryl flat black only to discover that most of the thinner or carrier had evaporated with paint being a clumped up gooey, almost rubbery mass in the bottom of the jar. (I suppose I must not have properly tightened the lid when I had previously used the paint.)  Had that been an enamel flat black, I would have thrown the paint away.  Never having tried to revive an acrylic that far gone before, I put in some Tamiya Acrylic thinner and stirred.  Amazingly, the paint dissolved back into the the thinner and is as usable now as when I bought it.   

zlee11 wrote:

Tamiya is pretty thin. I will thin if I have to.

Always look at each paint bottle individually.  Although Tamiya acrylics seem to be more consistent that Model Master enamels, I still see a noticable bottle to bottle variation on how thin of thick the paint is. 

IYAAYAS wrote:

always thin and STRAIN your paint!  Strain using an old pair of stockings!

Man, did that confuse me.... I started to pull out my Christmas stocking..... I gotcha now....

IYAAYAS wrote:

always thin and STRAIN your paint!  Strain using an old pair of stockings!

And don't stretch them too much. You want the mesh closed. 

One more question please....

I sprayed Tamiya matt white on my rotor blades. Now I need to mask out stripes and paint Soviet Green over them. I can only find Soviet Green by Polyscale. Have you guys ever tried this? Any interaction? Is there something I can spray over the white to protect from interaction of two different manufacurers? Is there a Tamiya that would be close to Soviet Green?

By the way.. My wife caught my with a pair of her pantyhose and a pair of scissors. It wasn't pretty. It was snowing and I did not want to go out. She just won't understand. 

I use Tamiya and Polyscale acrylics almost exclusively. As long as the underlying coat is fully cured, you shold have no problem.

One trick you might try: Sparay a coat of Future over the white, cure it thoroughly, and then mask on  top of the Future. You can get a better seal between the mask adhesive and the gloss surface of the Future.