Tamiya paints and the brush 'o' doom

How about using Tamiys thinner.... Or, if you think that that is to expensive, try mixing alcohol and water. Just water won't work, and alcohol evaprates to quickly.

Be sure that you mix the paint properly, stir the paint, don't shake!

I found the same thing, my solution. put the tamiya bottle about 8 inches further back on the bench,slightly behind the enamel I used to cover the tamiya

Odd, I've hand painted 3 aircraft with no problems. Flowed on nice and smooth, and covered well. Or should I say good'nuff for handwork? Whites and yellows required additional coats but I would expect that. I didn't thin the paints at all. You do need to let them dry completely (24 hours + ) before adding another coat or colour.

All that said, I have my first AB and am busy working up the courage to paint my first kit.

Right now vapochild, your idea makes the best sense.

Rem, I have used Tamiya thinner (I believe it is overpriced denatured alcohol , I could be wrong) with more or less the same results.

Bgrigg, dive into it straight away. As far as airbrushing goes, the Tamiya paints work extremely well.

I am slowly but surely substituting poly s (which spreads like a dream using a brush, with little to no thinner, and airbrushes well also) for the Tamiya paints. I just hate to have spent the money on the paint without using it. But thanks for the recs. Maybe I'm not loading enough on the brush...hmmm? I could pour the bottle over the model than just kind of swish it around where I need it I suppose. After it has dried a little, mask the area off where I want the paint to stay, and hose the rest off with denatured alcohol

lol, hose it off!
Honestly, maybe I have no "touch" but the tamiya black I bought for the Victory back end, is just awful stuff, I ended up stripping it and starting again. I'm sure it's just a knack, but I can't get it right, brush marks, uneven colour(yes I stired it!).
Enamel? thin spray/brush....done, nice finish, tough, looks great, yes it cooks your brain but the cigs and beer will do that anyway, so I'm safe,lol
It's not like I drink the Humbrol stuff

QUOTE: Originally posted by Wolfp Bgrigg, dive into it straight away. As far as airbrushing goes, the Tamiya paints work extremely well. I am slowly but surely substituting poly s (which spreads like a dream using a brush, with little to no thinner, and airbrushes well also) for the Tamiya paints. I just hate to have spent the money on the paint without using it. But thanks for the recs. Maybe I'm not loading enough on the brush...hmmm? I could pour the bottle over the model than just kind of swish it around where I need it I suppose. After it has dried a little, mask the area off where I want the paint to stay, and hose the rest off with denatured alcohol

A friend gave me his old Badger 150 and suggested I get a new needle for it. Nobody in town has one, so I had to order it and it hasn't come in yet. I have a stack of planes to paint when it arrives. I'm getting lots of practice spritzing water around!

I've heard great things about Poly S but sadly it's unavailable here. Since my build table is my kitchen table I'm loathe to use anything other than acrylics so I'm limited to Model Master & Tamiya. I buy both as required, they seem to get along on plastic, though I don't think I'll ever try mixing them.

Arrrrh the water spray, yes anything and everything got "water" coloured when my AB arrived a few short weeks ago. You'll very quickly get a basic feel for it, but I fear, it will be years before you can say your a master of the damn thing.lol

I've had problems hand painting using Tamiya acrylics. Acrylic retarder helps a bit, but I prefer to use the airbrush if I can.

Al

QUOTE: Honestly, maybe I have no "touch" but the tamiya black I bought for the Victory back end, is just awful stuff, I ended up stripping it and starting again.

I use a lot of Tamiya acrylic (as well as Model Master and PolyScale) and have very good luck with them through an airbrush. I'll be the first to admit that I can't hand brush worth a hoot so I seldom even try anything larger than a pin head. But , it isn't just you; Tamiya's black is absolute junk. The first coat goes down OK but you had better get everything done the first time. If you try and paint over it, it is going to dissolve itself. I have NEVER been able to brush over Tamiya black without it dissolving so I don't even try any more.

Maybe we should start a Tamiya paint won't spread worth a damn with a brush support group. We could sit at our computers, IM about the feelings that we have as we lay a line, go to lay a second, barely touch the first and it lifts everything off the part. Shed a few tears...you know, let those dammed up feelings flow and whatnot. Hey, its still cool to cry as a guy, or is that pase now? hehe. Al, I shall give your rec a try, never thought to use acrylic retarder.

tears.... maybe they will help the bloody stuff stay wet long enough to get down on the part? lol
I can brush, pretty well with enamels, but this acrylic stuff just bites me on the ****** every time.

i always thin my Tamiya paint before brushing. and i do use Tamiya thinner. i've tried alcohol with mixed results, due to alcohol evaporating too fast.

Tamiya thinner has a retarder in it it isnt just expensive alcohol. But if it didnt work for you...

I have had good luck with paint brushing Tamiya paints as a base coat on figures before using my artist oil, but you need to spray a primer coat on so the paint will grab. I would not recommend brushing any acrylic strait onto plastic as it will not stick as well. Try using the Tamiya, testors or Automotive primer first on what ever you are painting let it set for a couple of hours, best overnight, then try brushing on the Tamiya paint. You will see the difference right away.

hobby, that may just work... I'll have to give it a try on my next kit!

I'll just echo the sentiment that the stuff just cannot be hand brushed....at all.

A while back a friend gave me a Gundam in the middle of winter. I wanted to give acrylics a try since the varsol-less cleanup appealed to me. Tamiya is what the local store carries.

Well! I could not get a decent result no matter how hard I tried or how patient I was. It just would not go on evenly. The result was unaceptable on even on a small, small area like an elbow. I ended up airbrushing the entire thing, spending I dont know how much on canned air (I dont have a compressor) so that I wouldnt feel I wasted the paint.

I've still got about 8 nearly full jars if anyone wants them. :)

I wonder what I'm doing wrong since I have had zero problems with Tamiya acrylic paints being hand brushed? The only time I've had trouble is when I forget to prep the paint surface by washing off the piece first.

I bought some Model Master acrylic Zinc Chromate the other day, as I'm tired of mixing my own with Tamiya. Now there is a paint that is difficult to hand brush! Very thin paint, consistant colour sure which was my goal, but thin.

QUOTE: I wonder what I'm doing wrong since I have had zero problems with Tamiya acrylic paints being hand brushed?

HAH! I like your line of reasoning. It is not I that is gakked up because I cant get the stuff to stick. In fact, it is you, because you can. DOUBLE HAH!

Hobby1268, I habitually prime everything. So, that cant be it. Must be the devil has decanted a little bit of his essence into each and every one of my bottles. Not in sufficient quantity for their little tops to start spinning while spewing forth great gouts of paint mind you, but enough to be irritating.

Wolf - I've been able to brush some Tamiya colors fine, others just don't work for me. For acrylics I use Model Master or my favorite, Vallejo Acrylics. Both work wonderful! (I prefer the Color of Eagles by Vallejo by far though)

Wolf, I don't know what to tell you. Like I said, I use Tamiya for a base color for my Artist Oils to go over on top of. Try one more brand before giving up, try the Poly Scale paints (Floquil Acrylics) I like to use them as well to brush paint for my figures as they have a heavier pigment. I just did a comparison of both, and the Poly Scale stroked out smoother.
If still not happy with the acrylics, then I would go with Enamels, the best Enamel paint for brush paint ing is by far Humbrol in the tinlets. Yes, I know they are hard to get and the little cans suck the big one. But hands down the best to brush.

Sorry my earlier suggestion did not work out for you.

Heh...no worries. To tell the truth, acrylics are my paint of choice for figures and airbrushing. I cannot figure for the life of me why Tamiya gives me such a rub with a straight brush.. I use other types of enamels from liquitex for figure painting and never have a problem. Polyscale seems to work fine with a brush and airbrush. I havent tried modelmaster yet. As far as airbrushing, Tamiya works great, I just cant figure out why the pigments wont stay while brushing. Maybe I'll use them as a glaze?

Well, well, I just had a "Tamiya paint problem"! I took too long to finish painting an area and re-activated the paint I had brushed on a moment before. I was interrupted from my hobby by a telemarketer and it took me a bit longer than I thought to teach the young gentleman a lesson in telephone manners.

Are you sure you are giving the paint enough time to dry? Tamiya acrylics look like they dry quickly, but since acrylics dry from the surface down, you must insure that you give the paint time to fully dry.

QUOTE: re-activated the paint I had brushed on a moment before.

I think that is ultimatly the problem I had: It seemed as if I had ONE shot at it, one brush stroke. If I came back over, even withing a couple seconds, I just "tore" through the first stroke, and ruined it. Let it dry, sand it, try again (and again and again).

QUOTE: I think that is ultimatly the problem I had: It seemed as if I had ONE shot at it, one brush stroke. If I came back over, even withing a couple seconds, I just "tore" through the first stroke, and ruined it.

Acrylic retarders help a LOT in that respect because they slow down the drying time dramatically. I don't hand brush much at all, and what I do is primarily small detail areas or washes, but I've gotten to the point that I just use retarder for thinner. A couple of drops of retarder, 10 or so drops of paint, and it takes a lot longer to dry and eliminates a lot of the problems.

I also prefer Citadel paints for what little hand brushing I do. They don't have a lot of the hand brushing problems associated with Tamiya paints and, in my opinion, brush a lot better.

QUOTE: Are you sure you are giving the paint enough time to dry?

Could be. Other acrylics I can pretty much turn too on the second coat right away. Maybe Tamiya just has a longer curing time. Time to go experiment.

Figuring that with all the "pros" using it, Tamiya's paint cant be bad, so maybe I just need to learn how to use them.

So I broke out some XF-63 last night and painted some spare parts I have. It went pretty much as I remembered it: I would do one stroke, come back over it or even just next to it, and end up cutting into/removing the first. I continued on trying very hard to make one good pass and found it a challenge: either I would get too much paint and fill in details on the part and have to come back over, ruining the pass, OR not enough paint and have to come back over and risk just picking it all up. I found edges to be especially tricky: With enamels I would just bring the brush accross to either lay down more or pickup any excess but doing that here (again) cut into the paint allready on the adjacent surfaces.

The results after an hour of dry time: Questionable. Its not at all uniform although the excess at edges which I had left seemed to go away on their own. Looks as though 3 coats would be required to get a uniform finish and I question how thick it will be by then and if detail will be sacrificed.

Tonight, after 24 hours, I'm going to do a second coat. I'm also going to try priming some peices with a spray can primer, and see how that changes the way paint goes on. Someone mentioned that it doesnt go well onto bare plastic and I think that might be part of the problem, as if it can cling to it.

Someone else mentioned that Tamiya's thinner is also a retarder? What ratio of paint/thinner should I try?

Will post back as the experiment continues....

I have noticed something that happens while using the Tamiya thinner. I used at a 1:1 mixing ratio which is pretty much the ratio that I use with acrylics for all base coating, and the stuff became really thin, almost transluscent. So much so that the pigment tended to gather in recesses while flat or large spaces looked as if they would need at least three coats for proper coverage. I let it dry for aproximately an hour, so I did not have any problems with lifting. While encouraging, for me this still wont work because the advantage of acrylics is supposed to be the quick cure, and waiting three hours to complete a task just isnt what I want to do. When I increased the mix to 2 parts paint one part thinner, after an hour I was still having problems with lifting. Ho Hum. I am ready to throw in the towel and relegate Tamiya to airbrush duties alone. I just cant figure it out and life is too short to keep messing with it

I believe Tamiya recommends a 3:2 mixture of paint to thinner. Honestly wha I do is just add a couple of drops of thinner till it is flowing easy like milk I guess.. then paint for a 15 to 20 min and add another drop or so...

One of the biggest things I noticed is if I take X amount of paint out of the jar and put it in an artists pallette, add the thinner then paint it works better.

Ok.....handbrushing with Tamiya.........here's your solution!

1. Paint it thick....no thinner! Just glop it on....then gently brush it around quick before it dries......because once it starts to dry.....if u even touch it..........boom! flakes R us!

gl happy painting!

-Brian