Ok Folks. you take a 1 ounce jar of Pollyscale paint, and you want to spray it on a boxcar… How much distilled water , in teaspoons or tablespoons, not %, do you add to make the stuff spray correctly… And have you tried adding anything else… Then when you are done , what do you use to clean the brush.
Thank You alland Have a Good Holliday season
I mix PS 1:1 with water. If I had 70% isopropyl, I would use it also at 1 :1 instead of the water due to the faster evaporation. I clean the airbrush with water.
mokenarr
You didn’t mention if you were spraying a stripped boxcar or weathering. Assuming that you are weathering a car, then Duckdogger’s recommendation is a good one. For airbrush weathering I tend to thin Pollyscale with distilled water between 1 to 1 or slightly thinner depending on how lightly/heavily I’m weathering my surfaces.
Upon finishing, flush your airbrush out immediately with the distilled water or a 50/50 mix of distilled water and 70% alcohol. If you’re finished airbrushing for the day and not moving on to the next paint job, don’t forget to remove the aircap and needle and carefully wipe them. I found out the hard way years ago that even with good flushing, paint residue (solvent or waterbased) can still build up on those two components.
[;)]
OK, so this is a complete paint job. In that case, thinning Pollyscale at a 1 to 1 ratio could be a bit too watery for an overall but good for weathering.
For an overall paint job with Pollyscale, I normally go with 20% (4 parts paint to 1 part distilled water).
I always have scrap styrene or junker (Bachmann, Lifelike) freight car/locomotive shells to test my paint on first to avoid potential airbrushing disasters (been there done that). I know people likely look at me strangely when I find and grab an old plastic record turntable cover or CD holding tray at or near a dumpster. But those smooth plastic surfaces are great for testing airbrush paint mixes. . I’ve noticed that with acrylics some color mixes tend to be a little thicker than others when compared to solvent based finishes so testing for me is mandatory. [;)]
I bought a bottle of Badger airbrush cleaner and it does a great job. Windex also works well. I thin that was on a Cody’s Office a while back and is probably archives.
For regular airbrushing of a car or locomotive, PollyScale recommends thinning with 10% - 15% distilled water. While I’m fairly new to airbrushing water-based paints, I found this to work well, with good coverage and finish, and no clogging of the airbrush. I recently painted about 25 freight cars without a single incidence of the tip clogging.
I found alcohol to be less than satisfactory, giving a poor finish and excessive clogging of the tip. I’ve also found that the suggested air pressure of 15 to 20psi works well (better than the higher pressures suggested when using alcohol as the thinner).
For weathering, I’ve thinned it up to 90% distilled water with good results, although I usually boost the air pressure just a bit - multiple thin coats are usually preferable for any airbrushing, but especially for weathering.
For clean-up, I prefer lacquer thinner, as I have no ready source of water in my paint room and don’t like spraying it, as the excess takes too long to dry. The lacquer thinner does the cleaning quickly and evaporates rapidly.
Wayne
but doesn’t that leave curds of paint?
Curds? No way! [swg][(-D]
There should be very little paint left in your airbrush after you finish spraying - on my dual-action Paasche VL, drawing the trigger back (without depressing it) when removing the paint bottle from the lid allows the paint from the siphon tube to return to the bottle. I then remove the siphon cap from the airbrush, shoot air only through the brush, then attach the colour cup, filled with lacquer thinner and spray through the siphon tube, from the top end - this does a preliminary clean-out of both the airbrush and the siphon cap and tube. I then use a rag and pipe cleaners to finish cleaning the cap/tube assembly and the dis-assembled airbrush.
I’d prefer to continue using lacquer-based paints, but am forcing myself to learn handling acrylics, as it appears that’s all that will be available in the not too distant future.
Wayne
Adding to my initial comments, part of my logic for the 1:1 mix is the very dry AZ air. Normal mix rates on PolyScale resulted in clogged tips (mine are fine - likely medium or large would not be as prone to the dry paint clog). The extra thinning eliminated the issue but did require multiple coats to achieve the opacity.
Relying on thinning formulas is not really such a good idea especially with acylic paints. Everytime you open the bottle water is going to evaporate and thus the paint will thicken, so the water to paint formula will change. Ideally, using a medium tip in the airbrush, you want a paint consistency of milk.
DO NOT shoot your paint directly from the paint bottle, use a clean bottle or the paint cup.
Always run the thinned paint thru a strainer to screen out any particles and lumps that could clog up an airbrush. Everytime you open a paint bottle, the dried paint in the cap will fall into the paint. I use discarded nylon stockings, this is also another good check for the thinness of the paint, 'cuz if it’s too thick to go thru the stocking, it’s too thick for the airbrush too. I use little condiment cups , (I grab a handfull when I visit McDonalds) to pour the paint into and thin it, then strain it as I pour it into another little cup or into the paint bottle I’m going to shoot with.
I use an 80/20 mix of water/70% alcohol as a thinner.
Custom painter for 30 years.
By the way, I apologise for recommending a certain percentage of thinner to use rather than a specific amount, but you’d not likely use the paint jar directly for airbrushing. For the example which you cited, (an unlikely one for me, as I find it much more economical to paint a quantity of cars at the same time) I’d pour an estimated amount of paint into another bottle, then add enough thinner to fulfill, as closely as possible, the percentage required for that particular brand of paint. It doesn’t take a lot of practice to be able to do this “by eye”, which means no measuring equipment to clean. [swg] If you’re painting 20 or 30 cars in a session, you’ll also soon learn to add paint and thinner, in the proper proportions, to a spray bottle that is still partially full, again “by eye”. When you’ve finished painting those cars, you’ll clean your airbrush once, as opposed to cleaning it the 20 or 30 times which would be required had you painted each car separately.
While not directly in reply to your question, another labour-saving technique, particularly if you’re painting a number of different models or ones that are in different stages of the painting process, is to plan the best sequence in which to do your painting. For example, if I have models that require clear coating of some type (gloss, semi-gloss or matte), I do them first, then, after spraying a little thinner through the airbrush, I proceed on to spraying things needing lighter colours - white, yellow, or a light version of any colour, then progress through the darker colours, always passing a little thinner through the brush before
I personally like to run with a 1:1 mix also…I have found that if you do what the paint mfg. suggests it will not run right in the airbrush…also I just purchased 3 gallons of distilled water from the local supermarket…cheaper that paying 6 dollars for four ounces of Polly Scale “Thinner” which is the same thing.
Also I would like to suggest a way to clean airbrush needles…I use a pink rubber eraser…it helps to remove any crap from building up on the needle.
One more thing…a year ago I was having a problem with the air valve sticking in the open position…( I use a Badger #150 dual action airbrush)…I found a tiny amount of " Marvel Mystery Oil" works to free up and lube the sticky air valve.
And also I cheat a little by blowing straight air from the airbrush onto the painted model to help speed up the drying for a second or fifth coat.
“Relying on thinning formulas is not really such a good idea especially with acylic paints. Everytime you open the bottle water is going to evaporate and thus the paint will thicken, so the water to paint formula will change. Ideally, using a medium tip in the airbrush, you want a paint consistency of milk.”
Where do you live in the Arizona desert with a container of descant next to your paint bench? I to have been airbrushing for over 30 years and have never had that happen not even once. I use a digital scale when I mix all my paints be it solvent based or acrylics. This would be some what more plausible with solvent based paints as they evaporate at a much faster pace unless retarders are used.
I have mixed acrylics for customer jobs that live in states where solvent pains are illegal and always include no less then a quart of “mixed” paint to assure a good match for touch up purposes, So unless you open a bottle of mixed acrylic paint and walk away form it for maybe a day the absorption rate of the moisture in the air in nil.
99% of the time when I’m done painting hobby stuff with acrylics I throw what left away unless the bottle is almost full.
One thing that you will definitely need to do if you use Alcohol rather then water to mix your acrylic paint is keep a container of alcohol and a couple of Q-Tips handy. Every once in a while tip your Q-Tip in the alcohol and clean the tip of the air brush this prevents or cleans whats known as “Tip dry” This happens because the alcohol evaporates at a much faster rate then water, hence leaving the paint drying on the tip of the a/b almost immediately.
The other advantage of using Alcohol over water is that because it evaporates so fast the finish is much flatter/dull. When you want a solvent based paint to dry to a nice glossy finish the key is to slow down the drying time allowing the paint to flow over the object it’s applied to so it actually smooths it’s self out as it’s drying.
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