metalic arcylic buggin me

[cyberkid]

As the title says, most of the metalic colors in Tamiya's line has started to piss me off big time.
X-11, XF-16, XF-56..however thin I thin them they still have this fibre like texture. I used Tamiya's X-20A, gunze's leveling thinner, mr color thinner....
The strange thing is that this doesn't happen when I use non-metalic colors..
Any suggestions on how to fix this ?
Errg!

TIA
steve

[MPWR]

Let's see some pics of your fibre texture. (Judging by your avatar, my first thought is that it's cat hair related....)

Are you painting bodies, or doing detailing?

And stick with the X20A- mixing acrylics and laquer thinners will do nothing good for you.

[cyberkid]

Originally Posted by MPWR

Let's see some pics of your fibre texture. (Judging by your avatar, my first thought is that it's cat hair related....)

lol
I'm not sure if its that I'm inexperienced with arcylics, but the texture seems just too rough. And its detailing.




These 2 pics are under 3 or 4 coats of x-22.. before that it was worse.
strange thing is that the same XF-16 in enamels gives a completely different finish.
these are all AB'd

One last Q, what speed do you guys mix your paints? I've tried slowly hand stirring and using a modified Tamiya mix rod with a dremel.

[speedphreak]

Try lowering the pressure on your compressor. Perhaps its drying before it hits the surface. I shot Tamiya flat white at around 10-15 psi...no problem. I am using an Iwata hb-c.

-Chris

[MPWR]

Originally Posted by speedphreak

Try lowering the pressure on your compressor. Perhaps its drying before it hits the surface. I shot Tamiya flat white at around 10-15 psi...no problem. I am using an Iwata hb-c.

-Chris

Good thought. Yeah, I tend to spray at about 10-15 psi also, with no problems. Tamiya acrylics do have a somewhat large grain size, but a textured surface is a sign that the paint is partially drying in the spray stream.

As for mixing, I put a bit of paint in the paint cup, add a few drops of thinner with an eyedropper, and backpressure the airbrush for a few seconds to let the air bubbling up agitate the paint. Seems to be all it needs.

[cyberkid]

oh boy.. 10-15..eeh .. THAAAT's what I've been doin wrong... okee.. now to drop 25 psi to 15....yeah.. that's right.. I've been using near 40 psi to paint... strange though, I get good results with 40 psi when I'm using solid colors...

thanks guys for the replies..
will try this tomorrow
time for bed

Thanks,
Steve

[gionc]

Originally Posted by cyberkid

oh boy.. 10-15..eeh .. THAAAT's what I've been doin wrong... okee.. now to drop 25 psi to 15....yeah.. that's right.. I've been using near 40 psi to paint... strange though, I get good results with 40 psi when I'm using solid colors...

thanks guys for the replies..
will try this tomorrow
time for bed

Thanks,
Steve

That's depend also in how much you thin your color: a very thick paint need more pressure: try to thin more (milk to water) and try to "hear" the air trough the AB: I guess all of us make a kind of "hear" of the pressure around 10 psi: it need a bit of practice.

Your cat after bath in the avatar? Forgot he in the washing mach.?

[Nobbys Nuts]

I use 25psi pressure all the time with Acrylics with no problems but thats neither here nor there. The only time I have achieved that finish unintentionally was when I forgot to change the tip back over to a general use one on my Aztec Airbrush. I left the one on that gives that effect and spewed as I was painting a body at the time.

[cyberkid]

Thank you everyone for your replies. Results have been good so far.
Thank you MPWR for the paint mixing tip.

As for:

Originally Posted by gionc

Your cat after bath in the avatar? Forgot he in the washing mach.?

I'm afraid you are mistaken.. that was a picture of ME after getting outta bed in the morning.

[mike@af]

Originally Posted by cyberkid

I'm afraid you are mistaken.. that was a picture of ME after getting outta bed in the morning.

Really? Looks like me after a rough day of modeling.