Live and Learn

Building the Audi Quattro from Tamiya. I finished sanding today and airbrushed my car. Well, unfortunately, I seemed to not have enough paint with my 2 1/2 oz acrylic bottle. My airbrush thing started getting reely low. :eek: So, naturally I moved the airbrush closer to get a nice "even" paint job. Of course, I ran outta paint. The paintjob looked AWFUL! Is acrylic paint not supposed to be sprayed? Because it has a really weird texture. Anyway, I'm having to resand my Audi back down and am just going to buy one of those Testors spay cans. Everyone I hear talks about Tamiya, but where I live they don't carry Tamiyan stuff!! Oh well....live, and learn! :p Any suggestions or hints?

It would help if you had a picture, but you should be able to easily paint a car with a jar of paint (several cars in fact...). Sounds to me like you weren't thinning out the paint enough?? Without a picture of what it looks like, it's really hard to tell.

Acrylic paints will work just fine with an airbrush. They need to be thinned down with something like alcohol though. Is this the first time you used your airbrush??

Murray

Yes, its the first time I used my airbrush. The black on the chassis went on smoothly, but it still had an unsmooth texture. I went over by hand and it looks much better. I don't have a digital camera, so I can't take a picture. I re-sanded it back down and am just going to use some Testors spray can. Thanks! :biggrin:

It doesn't sound like you had it thinned enough to begin with since you had a rough texture. You should be able to at least do 2 bodies with a jar of acrylic. As far as spraying Testors over it, be sure ALL of the acrylic paint is gone, or you will more than likely get a bad reaction between the two. I'd suggest getting some Castrol Super Clean, an old tooth brush, and a chemical resistant pair of rubber gloves and just stripping the body, washing it well, priming, then trying again, with the testors if you'd like.

How do you thin the paint? I think thats the problem, most likely. I don't have a digital camera, though. So I can't post any pictures. Do ya'll know how to get or where to get Tamiya paints? Hobby Lobby and Michael's don't carry them! :uhoh:

Read the FAQ,s there is plenty of information there on thinning differant types of paint,including acrylics.

It doesn't sound like you had it thinned enough to begin with since you had a rough texture. You should be able to at least do 2 bodies with a jar of acrylic. As far as spraying Testors over it, be sure ALL of the acrylic paint is gone, or you will more than likely get a bad reaction between the two. I'd suggest getting some Castrol Super Clean, an old tooth brush, and a chemical resistant pair of rubber gloves and just stripping the body, washing it well, priming, then trying again, with the testors if you'd like.

I agree with Diesel if you're going to spray a lacquer over- make sure you get all of the acrylic paint off the model. Brake fluid would work just as well as CSC. And don't forget to primer again - just in case!!! I found out the hard way that lacquers over acrylics aren't a match made in heaven!!! :banghead:

www.hlj.com store an extensive stash of Tamiya Spraypaints. They don't cost too much either (half of what they cost in a shop here), so I ordered myself two cans of each paint that i need, just in case I run out of paint (I heard from many people that they need more than 1 spraycan)...

www.hlj.com store an extensive stash of Tamiya Spraypaints. They don't cost too much either (half of what they cost in a shop here), so I ordered myself two cans of each paint that i need, just in case I run out of paint (I heard from many people that they need more than 1 spraycan)...
Where in the world do you live that Tamiya paints cost twice as much as HLJ? If I can get them to the USA and sell them for the same price or very close then their should be no reason for them to cost more anywhere.
David
Scale Race Cars (http://www.scaleracecars.com)