What is the difference between name brand and craft store acrylics?

[clovis]

I went to the LHS today, just to look at the different paints they carry.

I was shocked by some of the high prices for Testors acrylic paints.

Is there much of a difference between the cheap craft store acrylics and the name brand stuff?

Thank you for your helpfulness!!!!

[ScaleDale]

Acrylic simply means plastic paint. Testors is formulated and tested to be applied by charlatans like me to plastic models with reasonably good results. The acrylics sold in craft stores are designed for a variety of surfaces and you might regret trying to save a few bucks painting your $25+ kit with it. Model Masters from Testors is better than the generic stuff from them and Tamiya makes even better (IMO) jar paints.

And keep in mind that you are painting small things. A jar of Tamiya Semi Gloss black cost me me $2.60 and will paint maybe 25 or so engine blocks.

Dale

[MikeyB08]

Yea... I've tried the Craft Store Acrylic paint and it's no where near as smooth as Testors. I felt like it didn't have the "bonding" to the plastic and left horrible stoke marks. Now maybe some primer would help sticking better, but price versus aggravation, your best bet it spend a few more bucks.

[Tom Geiger]

And keep in mind that you are painting small things. A jar of Tamiya Semi Gloss black cost me me $2.60 and will paint maybe 25 or so engine blocks.

Why would you brush paint engines when there are cheap sprays that can do the job quicker and with better results? I mainly use spray paints for everything. I prime everything after I clean up the parts. Then I'll attach the parts to strips of masking tape, onto toothpicks stuck into foam blocks etc., to get that thin and brush stroke free results.

I use a lot of automotive paints. I found Duplicolor large can truck colors on sale at Ollies for a buck a can. I bought 25 cans. Then I'll experiment with different cheap sprays from Home Depot or Walmart. I have a selection of blacks, gloss to different flat and semi-flat tones, some of which are 99 cent cans. Tonight at Home Depot I bought Rustoleum summer squash yellow satin paint for $3.99 to try for a look I'm hoping for on a truck project of mine.

If you need to do some detail painting, all you need is a box of the Dixie Cup small bathroom cups. I spray a little bit into one of those and brush as I need.

[Nxr]

Call me ignorant but i only buy US made paints and testors/model master/pollyscale/pactra/floquil is all i use, as well as hardware store paints such as rustoleum, sherwin-williams krylon. The model master acrylics are great for flat and semi gloss finishes and dry almost instantly, not so much for gloss as they just cant compare to their enamel version.

[Art Anderson]

There are acrylic paints, and then there are acrylic paints. "Acrylics" as we know them in model building started out, chemically, as "rubber-based" or latex paints in the 1950's, first marketed as house paints, for interior use, and finally as exterior paints. Very quickly, companies such as Grumbacher and others in the artist's paint industry began working with the basic formula's to create artists colors that could be used without linseed oil and turpentine (artist's oil paints). Artist's acrylics are very thick in texture however, allowing the painter to work with them in ways quite like working in oils.

Polly "S" Corporation came on the hobby scene about 1966 or 1967, with a line of model railroad colors, followed in a couple of years by their line of military colors, all using that same "latex" formula as the artist's acrylics, or for that matter, even latex house paints, but with thinner consistency, and MUCH more finely ground pigments.

"Latex" based acrylic paints are almost always flat finish, even the so-called gloss latex paints are at best only semi-gloss. With the explosion of interest in "crafts" that began in the early 1970's, several lines of flat finish acrylic paints come on the market, to feed the craze for what was called "folk art" (painting wooden objects to "represent" Pennsylvania Dutch artwork and household pieces. Brands of acrylic latex flat finish paints such as Delta Ceramcoat, Folk-Art, and Apple Barrel were in craft shops all over the place--along with brushes designed for the various painting techniques used in this art form.

I believe it was the Japanese model companies who first came up with water-borne acrylic enamel for hobby use though. The first line of such paints aimed at modelers to see wide distribution in the US was Tamiya, but Gunze Sangyo and others followed quickly in the early 80's. Acrylic enamels use plastic polymers to create that glossy finish, much shinier than was ever (in my opinion anyway) than was ever possible with the older latex based water-born acrylics, such as Polly S.

Both Pactra and Testors brought out their own lines of acrylic enamels in the early 1980's, and with RPM's buyout of first Testors, and then Pactra, the original Testors formula went away, replaced by their newly acquired Pactra formula--Pactra was much nicer, easier to use, and gave better finishes, certainly IMHO.

As for the craft-store acrylics, these are still latex based, and considering what they are formulated for, are quite thick in consistency--but they can be thinned for working on model car parts--most notably interiors. Once thinned, they can be brushed with very little in the way of brush marks, and can be airbrushed beautifully, but when airbrushing, the plastic parts need to be "squeaky clean" as any surface contaminants, such as fingerprints (skin oils) will prevent them from sticking. A lot of builders, myself included, have been known to airbrush a coat of thinned lacquer primers on interior parts, before using flat finish craft-store acrylics, which gives great adhesion, and absolutely no "beading up" of the water-borne acrylic paints.

Over on the military model side of things, pretty much water-born acrylics seem to rule, due to military modelers wanting absolutely flat finishes, and very thin coating as well.

As for "name brand" VS craft store acrylics, both lines of paints are "name brands" within their respective markets, chemically identical in all respects--the differences being in the consistency required for craft work as opposed to scale model work. And, of course, the color varieties are vastly more with craft paints, given their focus on interior decor around the house, as opposed to scale-correct colors for model builders. But, for finding colors that at least approximate interior colors on say, cars of the 1950's--a great place to look for them is in the craft paint racks.

Art