Air Brush Paints - Types?

[Stephen's Dad]

Earlier in the Scouting year I started a thread about advanced finishes. We had a good discussion about paint options. I was encouraged to visit various websites that offer all manner of unusual paints that are not sold locally.

Against my better judgement I took the advice of a local hobby shop owner who has numerous awards for his very realistic (but not shiney) military scenes. He recommended House of Kolor's "Kustom Kolors". These are NOT made by Kustom Kolors but rather private labeled & made by VALSPAR.

http://www.kustomkolorpaints.com/kustomkolor/index.jsp

These turned out to be enamel paints but we made this discovery AFTER we had applied a base coat & started masking flames onto Stephen's car. Sure enough the test strips wrinkled as soon as we applied the proprietary clear coat.

Stephen's car was already well under way so we waited 3 weeks for it (and some additional test strips) to dry thoroughly all side by side & with varying amounts of paint.

Regardless of the thickness of layers, once we had 3 layers of enamel built, the proprietary clear coat would cause wrinkling.

Back to the hobby shop I went with steam coming out of my ears.

Mr. Hobbyshop dude then admits that he's heard this from other modelers & recommends Model Master clear as the superior alternative clear. Gee, thanks! $7.00 poorer we head home to ready the car for the Derby. We had a week left to go so I sprayed a test strip as soon as we got home. No problem. The nest day Stephen applied the first "light coat" to his car with no ramifications. The following coat wrinkled the finish into a disastrous mess.

[Stephen's Dad]

The good news is we had to reschedule our PWD due to a horrific ice storm. So we diligently sanded the mess of his car & started over.

We went out & bought good old fashioned Duplicolor in rattle cans from the auto parts store. Believe it or not, once the base coat we applied from the rattle can, we sprayed the "flame colors" into the airbrush jars & found the results to be superior to anything we've ever tried before!

I understand that there are really only 3 types of paint. For some reason marketers often go to great lengths to conceal the type of paints they are selling.

Enamel
Lacquer
Acrylics

Try as I did, I was not able to locate a single company marketing a lacquer paint for use in an airbrush.

We still haven't tried acrylic but we will.

Which paints do other airbrushers use (not BRAND but rather TYPE)?

[pwdarchitect]

Water based Acrylic paint is a very good airbrush paint but is not "Shiney". One brand that I found to have a very good choice for Automotive type of finishes is called AutoAir Colors. A Urethane based clear coat will give the paint the "Shine" that you are looking for.
I have personally used this system on a number of cars with good results and cleanup is a breeze using Fantastic cleaner and water.

Most of the automotive finishes these days, name brands like PPG, Dupont, SEM, and HOK are a urethane based enamel solvent system. They tend to go on very easily with an airbrush after they are reduced/thinned to get it to "Flow" out of your airbrush. Cleanup requires the use of Laquer thinner. Other "league builders" have used these paints with great success so consulting with them would be appropriate.

Testors, Duplicolor, and Others make a Acrylic Laquer paint which can be found at a local hobby store in either a spray can or for the airbrush. The airbrush paints are generally used on plastic models but with the right primer and prep work can be used on a Pinewood Derby Car. I also have used this system and for the average JOE that doesn't have the time to spend finding out the proper mixture and etc., they can come up with some very nice end results.

I'm sorry to hear about your experience with the Valspar made Kustom Kolors ENAMEL system. Without seeing a picture of what your describibg as wrinkling coming up with an answer as to why this happened would be difficult. More than likely, the paint you used didn't have enough time to flash or cure and what you are seeing is a lifting from the solvents being trapped under the last coat.

A good reference for the different problems and causes can be found here:

http://www.spieshecker.co.uk/portal/en? ... 0199116115

[pwdarchitect]

FYI: I contacted Valspar and asked some pertainent question that might help others out there thinking about using the Kustom Kolors paint system.

Q. How long for a full cure?
A. The paint typically cures completely out at about 7 days, you can recoat between tact dry and about 4 hours.

Q. On the bottle paints which are enamel, what would you suggest that I clean my airbrush with?
A. Just for clean up, if you are using an all metal airbrush, acetone works well, unless you have o rings in the head.

Q. What type of Clear is the Best over the paint?
A. After the paint is cured you can use any clear on it.

[Stephen's Dad]

This is the same story I got from the hobby shop owner but I tried clear coating with both of his recommended products as well as some Sherwin Williams cc648 Acrylic Urethane. Regardless of dry time (4 hour tack to 21 days) the enamel finish from Kustom Kolor still wrinkled. I will never use this paint again. It clogged the airbrush tip as well but the cleaner I used was intented to clean arcylic paint so that was my fault.

Are you using Acrylic Ureathane clear to clear coat the acrylic water based airbrush paints? Over what kind of base coat?

[pwdarchitect]

Base coat I use has been Duplicolor Black base over Duplicolor Filler primer (high build formula).
Then doing the graphics in the AutoAir Acryic.
Then using a automotive 2 part urethane clear coat. This clear is a system consisting of the clear plus a hardener.
Example of the metod listed above:

[Pinewood Daddy]

That is SICK!!! How many hours did it take to do that???!!! I couldn't dream of doing something like that!! WOOOOW!!!

If Chip Foose was to build a PWD car it might look like that!!!

[pwdarchitect]

Thanks for the compliments. I've been doing cars for a while so it get's quicker each time.
Cutting and shaping only took a half hour. Sanding a little longer.
I paint in short time phases. Spray primer. Let set overnight then sand. Spray Base color. Dry over night again. Scuff base color with 800 grit. Paint graphics (took about 1/2 hour). Dry overnight. Spray clear. Dry overnight and then cut and buff the clear.