Why is it recommended to use distilled water with acrylic paints? Wouldn’t plain old tap water do the same thing?
Plain old tap water contains chlorides and flourides (courtesy of your local water department,) plus various dissolved minerals. These may or may not have unfortunate side effects when mixed with the ingredients of acrylic paint.
Wal-Mart sells a gallon of distilled water for less than most convenience stores charge for a drinking bottle of filtered tap water. I, personally, use it for everything. (Look, Ma! No white buildup in the coffee maker!)
One note about bottled water. Spring water is filtered water from a natural spring. Drinking water is filtered water from a city water supply. Both spring and drinking water contain minerals, which is what you are trying to avoid. (Drinking water actually has minerals added at the bottling plant, for ‘flavor.’)
Bottoms up!
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Use only distilled water for your decaling needs. Distilled water works to. It is usually less than a buck a gallon and will last a long time if you are only using it for paint thinner and decals.
Usually you can use denatured alcohol for thinning acrylic paints, not rubbing alcohol as they have additives in them that may do unwanted things to your paint. Rubbing alcohol 70 or 90 percent contain waxes and lubricates and maybe water or who knows what the other 30 to 10 percent is.
Paul
Dayton and Mad River RR
I used to use plain tap water for mixing paints. Being on a private well, I could do that. However, when the parish had community water put in I couldn’t use the well anymore, as they wouldn’t allow me to have both hooked up at once. So then I would go out to the well shed and get some water whenever I needed it for my painting needs, that is, until my father’s well compressor broke down. He uses his old well to fill his swimming pool and keep the level topped up. This would cost a bunch with community water (25,000 gallons at $20 per the first 2,000 gallons and $10 per every 500 gallons after that for the month). Seeing as I wasn’t using my well anymore he cannibalized the compressor. Well, I thought I would just use water that I got through the water filter in my trailer. UH-UH! Nothing doing. It filtered out chlorine and lead particles but very little else and when mixed with paint it looked OK but the paint would dry with whitish and greenish streaks in it. So now I just go buy a gallon of water at Wal-Mart and everything is perfect again.