fayfaychu

Assuming its the polyurethane primer, there should be no problem at all. Alcohol wont do much to a cured coating.

I second water and IPA. Their thinner smells of IPA too.

From my experience so far: 1)Use Model Air instead of Model Colour. The latest formula works fine for me so far. They have a scent of refresher for the latest batch strangely. 2)If Model Colour must be used, flow improver should be added. If it starts clogging constantly , the airbrush must be rinsed fully as any lumps will further attracts clogging. Also the 0.2 tip maybe the cause of problem. Simply too small for Model Colour I guess. 3)Adjust pressure. I used to think I have too high of a pressure (around 20psi, at source) so i turned it down to 15 psi. Big mistake. I guess the pressure gauge at the compressor translates to half of what it is at the airbrush. Now I tuned it up to 25 psi at the compressor and worked ok for detail painting. Tip dry still happens but less frequent. 4) If all fails switch to Lifecolor, or Tamiya. LC is less smelly though.

I have tried around 30%thinner is the ratio that worked for me for airbrushing LC colours.

Although not sure what wet-in-wet means, I believe all metal colours are best to be applied with thin thin coats, regardless of brand and type. I am no chemist but it seems to work best that way. Also shaking the he'll out of it helps lol.

Like Kuro said, the primer needs to be perfectly smooth for the top coat of Metal Colour to be equally smooth. I have not used Alcad's primer but if it contains mirco filler the surface is bound to be rough. Polishing will be needed. But If you still cannot achieve a smooth coating, I think you maybe laying the metal colour too thick. As you are using a 0.4mm nozzle it can put too much paint on the surface at once. This is what i will do : 1) add around 20% thinner (vallejo's brand will do) to the colour 2) adjust pressure a little higher than normal (say 20-25 psi) 3) spray further away than normal (say 20cm). All these will allow the mist to almost dry when it hits the surface, thus reducing the likelihood of pooling. I have tried lifecolours gloss black or GSI's acrysion gloss black as a base with certain success. Another trick i used was to "bake" the gloss paint and it really made a difference. O and the black primer from Vallejo is next to useless so you may want to forget about it.

To my knowledge apart from their aqueous , top coat and acrysion line everything else is cellulose based.

Gloss paint has never really worked for me regardless of the brand. For this particular model I mixed up gloss black with Gold with portion 10:3 (black to gold) as per instruction. The paint layer was thin, but I needed to bake the painted parts in order to obtain the shine for the monocoque. Other parts worked fine.

Their Super metal line are also great solvent based paints. http://www.mr-hobby.com/en/itemDetail.php?iId=134 When i mentioned earlier about not using enamel paint I actually mean solvent based paints . This I painted with Vallejo Metal aluminium and the result is acceptable to causal modeler like me.

Using Vallejo Metal Colour exclusively now. Havnt tried AK yet but I doubt I will ever wanted to use enamel paints again. My to-go metal paint was Mr Hobby previously, but 1) it has smell as all cellulose paint does, 2) can be used on cellulose paint surface only, 3)cleaning up airbrush is messy (and even more smelly because large dose of solvent used). Vallejo Metal Colour range is ready to airbrush from the bottle and odourless (doesnt mean harmless though). Cleaning airbrush was way easier, just had a litre of tap water around, pour out the excess, pour in water and spray until it is all clear. Water is cheap too. The paint also dries incredibly fast for acrylics, in matter of seconds if sprayed very thin. It can be touched in 5 mins. Just avoid the primer specifically for Metal colour and go with whatever paint that creates a high gloss black finish. Sometimes I dont even prime with black paint. I usually spray 2-3 thin layers to get coverage and it will take less than 10 drops only to cover a 1/72 model. A wide range of colour is available and i have almost all of them. Will try to post photos of sample. The aluminium is also indifferent to TS-17 (might even be better with better control from airbrush)

GPbooth, I bought these from local hobby shop specializes in Japanese paints and tools etc. I think they directly imported from Japan.

I couldnt find any detailed review about this new type of paints despite it has been released for a while. So I decided to share some of my experiences with it with the pros and cons I have encountered so far. All paints were bought out of my pocket. Firstly this is a paint that is completely new in terms of formula. I dont think it behaves like ordinary acrylics like Tamiya, Lifecolour, Vallejo, or even Mr Hobby's brand of water soluble acrylics. This paint is water soluble to a degree that you can clean your brushes with water when it is still wet. But it cannot be thinned with water. The drying time varies among colours, but normally it will dry in 5-15 seconds when applied by brush. The consistency of the paint is like milk out of the bottle, which suits very much for airbrushing directly. However Mr Hobby has produced two types of thinners for the Acrysion line, and both has its own property that should be considered when applying. The drying time varies among colours, but normally it will dry in 5-15 seconds when applied by brush and this is where the thinners come into play. The solvent with blue label has a high retarding property that will prolong the drying time and can remove unwanted brush marks. Meanwhile the thinner in green label is meant for airbrushing and the labels says you need to shake it before use. Do shake it before use unless you want a really high gloss finish that dries in 24 hours! Dont ask me how i know it though... After trying out the paints (i have bought dozens of them) the followings are noted: 1) I believed these paints are formulated for airbrushing. If thinned with the airbrush thinner they dont clog like the other arcylics do, and give a rather consistent appearance sort of like Mr Hobby lacquer line of paint. As the consistency of the paint is almost airbrush ready, you only need to add a few drops of thinner for each spraying session. 2) Coverage varies from colour to colour. Some of the colours is of a consistent liquid, while others, notably the white and grey ones, will have heavy pigment separation. For the gloss orange I showed here there are almost no pigments on the bottom but for the greys I always have to give the bottle a good stir before it becomes the colour it should be. The orange is also very transparent and required at least 3 coats before a solid colour is obtained. The coverage also varies from colour to colour and I think the orange is the most transparent I have experienced. I airbrushed on bare plastic, paint to thinner ratio around 70-30 (Can be unthinned as well), around 15 PSI. As you can see it produced a gloss finish that is hard to be done with acrylics. The humidity at the time of spraying is almost 98% but the finish wasnt really affect by it. I oven dried it at such high humidity to speed up the curing process. 3) So why bother with this new line? Well first it claims to have 8x% less VOC than their lacquer paints, which makes spraying indoors more tolerable. An extract fan is definitely needed but after say 1 min of spraying there is no smell what so ever left. Secondly it produces a coating that is so hard and durable that it almost compares to lacquer paints. Masking can be done almost immediately after it has cured and I have not experienced any lifting at all. 4) Some thinners (Lacquer and enamel thinners) can still dissolve it, but not with alcohol, Mr Hobby's own weathering thinner and water. After airbrushing I often find paints dried inside the airbrush cup and deep cleaning should be done first with water then their own tool cleaner. So the cons of the product? First the properties of it required practices. I made mistakes by thinning it too much and spraying at a low pressure, and the surface tension just got me. Some colour may appear to have a rather thick consistency but a few drops of thinner is really all it needs. These two bottles lasted me for couple months and is still more than half full. The drying time can varies and it is best to practice on scrape plastics before the formal application. Priming is not a must but will certainly help. The choice of colour is rather limited at this time but Mr Hobby seems to be expending the range slowly so we will see. The bottom line? I think I will use this line of paints for painting the base colours of a model, where masking is often required for the succeeding layers. It has a higher learning curve than most arcylics, and is not as convenient that the likes of Vallejos. But is durable and considerable less toxic than lacquer paints. Hopefully Mr Hobby can come up with a wider selection to suit more purposes. Sorry for the long post.

I believe the Mr colour super metallic range are to be sprayed and cannot be buffed. Another range from Mr Colour with special labels are specifically designed for buffing. To achieve best results from the super metallic range, it needs to be sprayed at very very thin layers and build up accordingly. Since both Mr Colour and Alcads are lacquers they are roughly the same in terms of smell and toxicity.

No expert here but I have tried ultrasonic bathed my airbrush to clean set Vallejo/unknown paints, without much success. In theory I think sonic bath can remove physically bonded arcylic like vallejo/AK, but i found the cleaning process is so slow that it is better to just soak cleaner in and spray thoroughly. Tamiya may not be true arcylics (not an expert here, need verification) so water alone is not effective. For cellulose based paints, ultrasonic bath will not clean dried paints with water and required respective thinners with methods mentioned by Mitch K.

One more trick I want to add is that a smooth gloss black coat before applying the metallics will greatly enhance the coating, regardless of brands and types. For this range of paint I have tried to use Lifecolour gloss black (very forgiving and highly self leveling) as a base then the Vallejo in very thin layers with certain degree of success. I think I will be shifting to this range of metallics from now on, way less harmful fumes.