*Airbrushing Testors Paint*

[Zippi]

I saw a video of a fellow (Dave G.) airbrushing Testors thinned with lacquer thinner at 50/50 and the outcome looked pretty good.  I thought I would give it a go this morning.  The subject body is the Revell 1956  Ford pickup.  I bough a bottle of the Testors Gloss Tangerine and thinned it with the Sunnside lacquer thinner that I keep on hand.  I did not prime the body and this is a first for me.  Air pressure was set at 35 psi running through my Paasche H airbrush.  By the time I got done with 4 coats of paint I had used the whole bottle.  Except for some trash in the paint (I paint outside) it came out pretty good but not as good as Dave G. red that he airbrushed.  

Edited August 15, 2021 by Zippi

[Dave G.]

Not much time right now, I have a couple thoughts. But that finish should polish right up after a couple applications with something like Formula 1 Scratch Out.

I was going to suggest getting two bottles lol !!  I'll be back,others might chime in meanwhile.

[Zippi]

Thanks Dave.  These are the products I normally use.  I'll see how these work out.  I'm going to let the paint cure for a full week before I start polishing.  I have everything covered with a plastic tub for the time being.  I'll probably remove it in 48 hours as it should be fairly dry to the touch.  I think it will cure faster with the tub off.        

[AMT68]

Color and shine look great Bob and I didn't realize lacquer thinner was used to cut enamel paint. But then I've never airbrushed either. 

 

[DPNM]

Doesn't look real bad. A good buff should do it.

Just a suggestion, if you raise the bed and hood inside the tub you could put something under the tub edges to raise it up a bit for airflow. You could leave the painted parts in there so you don't get more debris falling on your paint job.

[espo]

That color is real eye catching. 

[peteski]

You could also add some Testors/Model Master thinner along with the lacquer thinner. It has slower evaporation rate, allowing the paint to level out better.  Always test on a spoon!

[Zippi]

Thanks for the comments fellows.  

Jim, I do have the tube setting on the painters sticks but I guess I could raise it a little higher and leave the parts under the tube.

[Don Sikora II]

I've had great results spraying Testors enamel thinned with the Model Master/Testors airbrush thinner in the larger (6 ounce?) metal can.

[Draggon]

I've done that since I got my first airbrush in the 60's. It wasn't intentional-all we had in the house was lacquer thinner, and I'd been using it to clean brushes. Works great. I've even be known to dilute it 80/20 thinner to paint and blow on a quick final coat to get it real smooth and glossy. 

And yes I do know Don Yost does it this way. ?

[Dave G.]

Sometimes I do one of two things in warmer weather. I mix 30-40 % hardware paint thinner into the lacquer thinner before thinning, then thin with that. This acts as flow aid and retarder. Paint thinner by itself flows like crazy but I notice you can get craters or a fisheye type effect using it alone. Or I nix the LacquerThinner and go 50/50 odorless mineral spirits and paint thinner then thin as usual.  So those are some options to mess with. That video was from Andy X, I just linked it. I thin more like 55/45 paint to thinner which is more what he had by the time he flushed that bottle, fwiw.  I used to use Pete's method but hit on these and never went back. But that finish you have there is going to buff up fine.

You may not have pure lacquer thinner !! Some states have put so much restriction on LT it ships to those states mostly as acetone. Not saying thats the case but get a whiff of acetone when you can, then your thinner, should be a different smell.

On another note a guy or two over in the FSM forums made paint dryers using a tub like you have there. Mounting a low watt light bulb in the top or in the back on one end, wired on a dimmer ( I want to say 25watt bulb) and a computer cooling fan in one end, a bunch of holes in the other end with a furnace filter mounted there.. I believe one guy sets his dimmer till inside temp is around 110F. He leaves enamel in for 3 days to full cure. I can get full cure in about 8 hours in a dehydrator. I just use the Emeril 350 we have in the kitchen lol, set to 108 usually. But I'm going to conduct some experiments with hotter temps, I think I can get to 115f. I've done 110. I usually do 3 hours to kick start it. Then air dry a few days, those few hours I can handle the painted surface ok. Besides we may need to change it to oven mode and cook pizza. Just put the parts on a small tin or something and put the whole tin in the oven.  Anyway, if you get to like enamels ( this is just your first shot at it, I been shooting enamel 60 years, a form of dryer helps pick up the pace, especially if you do two tone work. Some guys by used food dryer and hack the racks up. One guy in FSM scored one of those cabinet style paint dryers in a yard sale or flea market someplace.

Pretty sure it was 50/50 LT to paint thinner and thinned Model Master yellow enamel 55/45 paint to thinner and can see myself in the differential of the 1911 Mercer. That day was pretty dry as I recall, maybe 68F.

 

[Zippi]

Thanks for the info guys.  I'm thinking I may not have shot the paint on thick enough on the last coat.  I'll do that next time around.  I'm airbrushing Testors gloss black next.  Never have had black to come out looking slick yet.  

[Dave G.]

Depending on the paint viscosity, the day etc. I put down the last two coats pretty wet. I don't so much change my shooting distance as open up a bit more and slow the passes down.  I hand hold the body on a mount of one sort or another and always shoot down onto it, not to the side. So the roof faces up when I shoot, the left side faces up when I shoot and the right side faces up when I shoot and each end faced up when I shoot. Doesn't have to be perfectly up but the brush should be shooting down on it in a general way rather than shooting a horizontal surface.

Another thing is the compressor. The Paasche H flows that true 35 psi but not all compressors keep up to that. Many airbrushes today restrict air to 20 some odd psi, you can set the compressor to 50 psi but the airbrush itself won't flow it but the H will. You need to watch your working pressure, that's what the gauge reads with air flowing through the brush. That said  I shoot enamel 32-33 psi working pressure anyway personally,least at the thinning ratio we are talking about. If there is a good pattern coming out it will go down fine. If it needs more I crank it up some more but my compressor will flow 4.5 cfm at 45 psi or 3.5 at 90. Most hobby compressors won't flow that at any pressure setting. Point being I don't worry about it.  I don't pamper it, I just blast it on lol. There is a rhythm to the passes, once in the groove just keep going.

Black can be tricky, pick a nice day. And practice, get a few bottles, you don't want to run out mid spray. When Model Master stopped producing classic black I was bummed, had it perfected. I havn't shot the regular enamel in decades. But I have Tamiya X-1 going down pretty glassy. Just a light buff is all. Did 1/16 model A fenders in that last fall and came out awesome. Then the wife died and I've only worked on the kit half heartedly since. Just getting back to functioning a little more normal now but 47 years with someone you love who up and croaks one night is a real shall we say stirring upset.

 

[bbowser]

Dave, some great information here, thanks for sharing.  My condolences on your loss.

[Zippi]

Thanks once again Dave.  Sorry to here about you wife's passing.  Here is the air compressor I use.  I set the pressure at 40psi and once I hit the button on the H it drops to a 35psi working pressure and holds it there.

[Dave G.]

11 minutes ago, Zippi said:

Thanks once again Dave.  Sorry to here about you wife's passing.  Here is the air compressor I use.  I set the pressure at 40psi and once I hit the button on the H it drops to a 35psi working pressure and holds it there.

That compressor looks to be pretty close to mine lol !

[Zippi]

Rain most of this week with high humidity so probably won't do any airbrushing this week.  

[Dave G.]

Thanks guys on my wife . We all have an expiration date that is not written on our birth certificates. Hers came up Dec 20, 2020, 1:10 am.

Edited August 17, 2021 by Dave G.

[peteski]

2 hours ago, Dave G. said:

Thanks guys on my wife . We all have an expiration date that is not written on our birth certificates. Hers came up Dec 20, 2021, 1:10 am.

I hope that you don't mind some levity, but that looks like she was able to time travel?

On a serious note, my condolences on your loss.

[TransAmMike]

2 hours ago, Dave G. said:

Thanks guys on my wife . We all have an expiration date that is not written on our birth certificates. Hers came up Dec 20, 2021, 1:10 am.

I'm just reading about your better halfs' passing.  My goodness, I can't imagine.  My sincere condolences!!

[Dave G.]

11 hours ago, peteski said:

I hope that you don't mind some levity, but that looks like she was able to time travel?

On a serious note, my condolences on your loss.

Oh my, thanks Pete ! Corrected it.

[bill-e-boy]

My condolences as well Dave

Back to the subject at hand - I recently used some square bottle Testors paint. Testors was the go to paint before it became hard to find down this end of the world - we lost ready access to it about 10 years. I have quite a stash of both the small square jars and the bigger round bottles.

My method is to thin with either the Testors thinner in the metal can or generic lacquer thinners at a ratio of 1 paint to 1 1/2-2 of thinners. I spray at 25psi and first coat is a mist coat progressing to heavier coats. Coats are about an hour apart Object being sprayed goes into the hot box along with the paint jar. My hot box is a cube box about 400mm cube with a 40W lamp on a dimmer. I have been using this box since the mid 80's. Object is hot soaked with lower heat overnight and colour sanded with 1500 grit before final coat or two then straight into clear coat. With the thinner paint there is little orange peel to knock back when final colour sanding and polishing after a weeks cure time.

This works for me and I have been using this method with Testors paints for a while now - it was interesting to read of methods of other people a while ago in another source and in this thread.

 Of note with thinners -

Lacquer thinners - This is hot and the paint touch dries to the touch quicker but takes almost as long to cure as when used with Testors thinner

Testors thinners - A cooler thinner and does work with leveling out as I don't seem to remember having to work as hard colour sanding as I do when using lacquer based paints

White Spirits/Lighter Fluid - Not sure what it is called in US but can also be used as a thinner for Testors.  White spirits is a little hotter than Testors thinners.  I used to use it with Humbrol paints - which we can still get - before Testors became available to us down here in NZ

Mineral Turpentine - Cure time is too slow so I don't go there. Too much drying time for greeblies to find their way into my pristine paint job

[Dave G.]

Thanks everyone for condolences !

Yes there are a number of ways to thin Testors bottle paint.

Hot lacquer paint, especially hot acrylic lacquer I just never liked on models, too much sanding/polishing etc. You can get some great colors and great matches to OEM but at this stage of the game for me it's not worth the extra work. I mostly do classic era cars bone stock, enamel is fine. I've done well with mixing Tamiya acrylics too. Most of these cars were non metallic. I've done them with craft paint and clear coat, come out good but you know it's cleared and those cars weren't clear coated in 1/1. Now and then I'll do a 50's Ford or Chevy done street and strip or semi custom. That's different I'll use Tamiya clear colors over acrylics for that or stock paint, depends on my idea which generally ends up morphing anyway.

Lately though been into 1/16 scale, basically box stock. I figure the paint out as I go but like the 57 T Bird that's sitting in the wings waiting really screams enamel at me.

[peteski]

4 hours ago, bill-e-boy said:

White Spirits/Lighter Fluid - Not sure what it is called in US but can also be used as a thinner for Testors.  White spirits is a little hotter than Testors thinners.  I used to use it with Humbrol paints - which we can still get - before Testors became available to us down here in NZ

Ronsonol Lighter fluid is Naphtha, and is is also sold in USA as a paint thinner in a hardware store.  It is called VM&P Naphtha.  (That stands for Varnish Maker's & Painter's Naphtha).  I use it for all sorts of purposes and it evaporates a bit faster than Testors thinner (but still slower than Lacquer Thinner or Acetone).

Edited August 18, 2021 by peteski

[Zippi]

Well.....my first time around airbrushing Testors enamel thinned 50/50 With lacquer thinner went great so I think I'll stick with that.  like the old saying goes, if it ain't broke don't fix it.  I think I was a little hisitant about spraying it to thick but next time I'll lay the paint down.