Color, paint and DIY help

[Phaze]

First of all, thank you so much for the resource of this forums. I have learned so much from here. I have learned answers to questions I didn't even know I needed to ask.

 

So,  a little background on me. I'm fairly new at this hobby and I'm still in the beginner stages. I'm also learning how to airbrush and I want to airbrush as a painting tool outside of model building as well as painting my models. I am currently trying to collect all of the Vallejo paints, and some Tamiya paints.

 

My professional background is a stucco plasterer. Our favorite type of stucco finish right now is acrylic stucco. I've been to where they mix the dye's for our finish material and what they do for mixing colors is they have a contraption that holds bulk color and will dispense a measured amount. They have a chart that tells how much of each color to dispense to create the color needed. This makes for a very controlled dye color for professional use. 

 

I want to know if I could set something like this up for myself. Has anyone tried and what are the limitations? I was at a general hobby store yesterday and saw that they have big containers of color for like $15 a bottle. I found a couple online resources that have all the color for every model paint company and how to mix them from the prime colors so I think this would be a very cheap (comparably) way of getting all the colors I want. 

Here are the online resources so you have a better idea what I'm trying to do.

First, a cross section of different model paint color schemes:

paint4models.com

next is a color mixer:

trycolors.com

What you do is go to the first link and pick the color you want. Say the model calls for Tamiya XF57. You find that and look at the RGB code, which is E0C895. Then you enter that into the second link, the trycolors.com and it tells you that to make that color you need 4 parts yellow, 4 parts red, 3 parts cyan, and 5 parts white.  

So much experience here, I'm sure I'm not the only one to think of this, so maybe you could steer me one way or another before I invest in a bad plan =)

Edited January 31, 2016 by Phaze

[Ace-Garageguy]

It seems like an interesting idea, at least. Real-car body shops have similar, in concept, mixing systems that allow the shop to closely duplicate factory colors by formula, by weight of pigment / mixing base.

The problem, as I see it, is similar to what we experience in the real world. Some mixing bases rarely get used, but you had to pay for them. They sit on the shelf forever and sometimes go bad or dry out.

Unless you're expecting to do a LOT of model-car painting, I'd think a more cost effective approach would be to buy your matched paint product, as you need it for a particular model, from one of the small suppliers who specialize in providing factory-matched and custom-mixed paints for the hobby.

 

[Phaze]

Well, I want to airbrush other things on a much larger scale and I'll need to practise techniques and so on so I see using a lot more color then just for models. I doubt I'd be too worried about paint drying because you only need about 6 Or so prime colors to make every other color, barring specialty colors like metal and such. Each bigger color jar costs about $15 or so, which would make total paint costs at $90. 

 

The biggest annoyance I have, and it's totally my fault, is that I bought a bottom feed airbrush and I'm constantly cleaning the one bottle. I have to buy more bottles anyways, but trying to find bottles with a top to fit in the airbrush is annoying. I have made my own out of Tamiya lids and feel confident on making more (they work very well) but the Vallejo lids are too small to get my DIY lid to work well

 

All in all, I just see my annoyance factor decreasing if I can get one type of bottle for all my airbrushing needs

 

And I am most definitely getting a gravity feed as soon as I can. But I still want to use my bottom feed for bigger painting projects

Edited January 31, 2016 by Phaze