Humbrol Enamels - Garbage?

[Brad]

The only Humbrol paints I buy these days are the metallic colours and the bottle gloss. I will not buy any Humbrol tins again until they drastically improve their paint as there are numerous other paints that are far superior. 

['V']

Ahh Graham Boak,

 

I've had several over the years - you do get the odd one that's not quite right, even when made

in Hull. I spent 12 years or so as a civilian instructor with the ATC from the early to mid '80's and

of course when helping run the Make & Take at Telford (In the early Days).

It's not just one duff tin, the entire paint formula has changed beyond all recognition, nearly all my

newer paints are either Duff, or at least suspect. My tins marked 1994 generally still work well as

well as many even older ones.

The modern paint is faster drying, too fast and while using a matt black recently the almost new

tin was beginning to get a skin, or at least loosing it's fluidity after a few minutes use.

 

If the P.O took paint I would be returning, but I shall talk to my local retailer, however today I'm off

to Weymouth to get some Revell to see how these fair now. Certainly their matt varnish is still a

usable product unlike the several tins of recent Humbrol where every one is not up to standard.

 

'V'

[Tbolt]

On 11/14/2016 at 8:49 PM, Graham Boak said:

You've been brush painting since the 60s and have now got one duff tin?  Lucky you to have lasted so long.  However, the right thing to do now is what you say you are doing, that is what should be done with all consumer products that fall well below expectations.  Demand a replacement or your money back.  If you get a replacement and it's the same problem, repeat.  Write to Humbrol and complain.

 

I wish one duff tin was all I had. When Humbrol went under briefly a few year back I stocked up - now I wished I hadn't - I got a least 4 tins (which were unopened till I tried them a few days a go) of 155 OD which don't have the correct amount of drying agent in them (?) and take about three days to dry, I've just been through them all as I had 3 tins before that which would not dry and recently used a tin of  red 174 which took over a week to dry!  OK these are before the production was moved to the UK, but I just opened a tin of UK, blue wave 155 and not only does there appear less in the tin, but it a bit thick and and a little lumpy even when mixed a lot, the quality seems just as bad as a lot of the non UK made stuff. Also the colour seem quite a bit different to what it use to be.

 

 It's so much nicer opening a tin of Colorcoats enamel. I'm just wondering how many of my unopened tins of Humbrol are bad now.

Edited December 22, 2016 by Tbolt

[Head in the clouds.]

On 14/11/2016 at 8:52 PM, bentwaters81tfw said:

The guy selling 'bargain bundles' at Telford was, I suspect, offloading dodgy stock. I know a few bought them. I was not among them.

 

Whoo, I nearly did, I stood for several moments contemplating and decided not too. Close call.

[sapperastro]

My experiences with new Humbrol enamel have been a lottery. Some of them have been excellent, others watery non dryers, others thick sludge that dried faster than an acrylic and defied all attempts to thin them with Humbrol thinner (well, they did thin, but they went on very poorly, with no leveling at all...it is hard to explain since I have never come across this with paints before). There seems to be no rhyme or reason for which colours are bad and which are not, apart from matt black, which has gone from the previous world beating matt black, to the worst sludge known to man or beast.

 

Thankfully I have a stock of Tamiya enamels, which are pretty good enamels, and have since tried using the Colourcoats enamels, which are excellent. With this arsenal at hand, I can afford to say 'seeya later' to Humbrol. Not without a touch of sadness; they have been the paint I have used since I started this hobby as a kid, and always worked perfectly back then. Oh well, what can you do...

[Drift]

If you guys think Humbrol is bad, dont EVER try Molak. 

[sapperastro]

Perhaps Humbrol is determined to beat Molak at its own game?

 

I will have to check out Molak. You have me curious now.

 

Hmm, after looking at Molak it seems they really like Humbrol. Right down to the numbers and names allotted to colours.

Edited December 22, 2016 by sapperastro

[LaurieS]

There is an easy way out of this. Always works.

 

Rather like watching television turn to an alternative program .

 

I would try other manufacturers. No point in getting frustrated.

Try alternative acrylic and enamels to see what suits your method

of working and the finish you expect.

 

I started model making with Humbrol and near gave up. Tried

others and was restored to sanity.

 

Laurie

 

 

 

 

 

[sean]

3 hours ago, LaurieS said:

I started model making with Humbrol and near gave up. Tried

others and was restored to sanity.

 

How true this is for me as well, finished my old tins of 163 and 164, new stuff was duffer 

than Homer's beer, shame, but it did open up different opportunities,

 

Sean

[Steve Noble]

I've used Tamiya enamels in the past and always had good results with them. If you can get hold of them they are worth a try. Only acrylics I will use with a brush are Vallejo Model Colour. All others I've tried are hard work.

[EJS]

I feel your pain. Many of our "old favorites" have gone by the wayside.

 

Never used Humbrol, but the Model Master lines have changed also since they were bought out by Rustoleum Corp. The paints are a different consistency, the colors  have changed hue and the color line has gotten much smaller, with the naval color line completely gone and the floquil and polly scale lines as well, in both the enamel and acrylic lines. The more popular colors are no longer available as those lines sell out.

 

I also like Vallejo Model Color for brushing. I've got some Model Air for airbrushing but haven't tried it yet. Hope it's as good as the Model color. I also like Tamiya, especially for airbrushing. For a primer coat, Tamiya rattle can aerosol primers work well for me. They have enough solvent in them so they seem to key into the plastic and adhere very well to plastics as well as other materials. I rarely have any "pull-off" when masking over their primer. I sometimes decant the primer into a bottle and spray it with my airbrush. Thankfully, many of the shops here in the US carry full lines of the Vallejo and Tamiya.

 

My very favorite though for naval colors is White Ensign. They got quite scarce and expensive after the company went under. I hope someone picks them up and the US gets a distributor for them. Sure glad I stocked up on them unknowingly about 6 months before that happened and they were on sale. Got a couple years supply of those. 

 

EJ

[Tbolt]

 

2 hours ago, EJS said:

 

My very favorite though for naval colors is White Ensign. They got quite scarce and expensive after the company went under. I hope someone picks them up and the US gets a distributor for them. Sure glad I stocked up on them unknowingly about 6 months before that happened and they were on sale. Got a couple years supply of those. 

 

EJ

 

The Colourcoats paints can be bought in the US on eBay from Warship Hobbies http://stores.ebay.com/warship-hobbies

Edited December 25, 2016 by Tbolt

[EJS]

34 minutes ago, Tbolt said:

 

 

The Colourcoats paints can be bought in the US on eBay from Warship Hobbies http://stores.ebay.com/warship-hobbies

Great, thanks for that. Price about double what I paid last year though. I do need some anti fouling red though.

 

EJ

[Tbolt]

10 hours ago, EJS said:

Great, thanks for that. Price about double what I paid last year though. I do need some anti fouling red though.

 

EJ

 

Yes they look a bit expensive but with the weak pound the price might drop in the future.

[viscount806x]

On 11/03/2012 at 2:40 AM, Martian Hale said:

 

Bring back the old Airfix paints in the glass bottles says I! Bugger! That gave my age away a bit!

Martin

 

Please no Martin, my little boys hands couldn't ever get the bottle tops off them again once they had been used. And the matt paints never dried properly, just like the new Humbrol ones.

 

However, a return to the 'old formula' would be good and would certainly restore faith in the once great brand. Could they do it though with modern health & safety regulations?

Edited December 26, 2016 by viscount806x
spelling!

[old thumper]

I have pretty much the full range of humbrol matt enamels and find them to be mostly very good. Humbrol silvers, aluminium etc are complete rubbish though. The Gloss I have is pretty good, but apart from black I hardly use gloss paint.  

[Martian]

1 hour ago, viscount806x said:

However, a return to the 'old formula' would be good and would certainly restore faith in the once great brand. Could they do it though with modern health & safety regulations?

Well, I have a considerable stock of unopened Airfix paints which I fully intend to use, "elf and safety" or not. I used them as a kid and as a teenager until they were no longer available and never came to any harm. although it never occurred to either my friends or I to drink them or anything. I suppose that might have harmed us. I think many of these current rules create a case of the tail wagging the dog inn that some products no longer do what it says on the tin or produce an inferior product.

 

Martian

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

On Monday, December 26, 2016 at 9:31 AM, Tbolt said:

 

Yes they look a bit expensive but with the weak pound the price might drop in the future.

 

Thanks for the mention

 

Our other US distributor, H&B Hobbies is also expanding in to Naval colours quite rapidly. Their latest order (which Britmodeller's Stew Dapple has very kindly been helping me to produce) contains mostly naval colours this time around and in some reasonable quantities.

 

Warship Hobbies has carried most of the range for most of the time, being a long term dealer of Colourcoats.

[Ragtag]

On 22/12/2016 at 4:29 PM, sean said:

 

How true this is for me as well, finished my old tins of 163 and 164, new stuff was duffer 

than Homer's beer, shame, but it did open up different opportunities,

 

Sean

 

Hi Sean,

 

out of curiosity - what did you settle on as a replacement for Hu163?

 

Thanks,

 

Stu

[The original Kit Builder]

I mentioned the problems with Humbrol paint since the manufacture came back to the UK, to the guys on the Airfix stand at Telford. They were surprised that there was a problem, as they'd not heard of it.

 

They were concerned enough to ask if it was limited to a particular colour and suggested I check the batch numbers. When I said it wasn't and I had, they asked me to email Hornby about it and said that if I heard of anyone else with similar issues, to get them to do so, as well.

 

I've used Humbrol almost exclusively for over 40 years and never before had issues with the chemistry of the paint, though some of the shades have been off at times. I have found that one needs to add significant amounts of enamel thinner, just to make many of the new tins' contents thin enough to draw into a pipette for transfer to the mixing cup and that's a bug-bear to start with.

[sean]

5 minutes ago, Ragtag said:

 

Hi Sean,

 

out of curiosity - what did you settle on as a replacement for Hu163?

 

Thanks,

 

Stu

 

 Hi Stu,

I started using Mr Hobby paints, the Aqueous range, and their Dark Green, which is H330.

I had already bought a cheap airbrush after using a couple of their paints, and that seemed the way to go.

I used it on my Meteor MF 14. They are very good, and I find them very forgiving for a newcomer to the airbrush.

If I lived on your side of the Irish Sea though, I would have tried Colourcoats enamels, but unfortunately they're 

not available over here, so that might be another option for yourself,

 

Sean

[sapperastro]

You have not had problems putting the thinner in the tin? I can get away with it in the older tins and even in tins of some other brands using humbrol enamel thinner, but I have found that with some of the new humbrol it can turn to jelly or dry out after putting the thinner in the tin. I usually transport the paint and then thin, but now and again had to put some in the tin for reconstitution.

[LotusArenco]

12 hours ago, Kit builder said:

They were surprised that there was a problem, as they'd not heard of it.

Our QA bloke, back when I worked at Colart (many moons ago) said as much himself - Colart had the contract for Humbrol enamel out in China. I think that Rustins now have the contract?

 

No official complaints of any sort were passed on to him from Humbrol, other than those few that I’d found myself and passed on from various forums.  Here I must apologise profusely to the entire Humbrol using modelling community for not getting more involved in whatever small way I could (I was just a mere engineer/chargehand/setter/dogsbody). A mix of me not being an enamel user, and the fact that in 2009 they announced the factory closure which made me more than a little disenchanted with the entire company.

 

QA at Colart back then was of a very high level. We produced Winsor & Newton, Liquitex and a few other well-known brands under the same roof (even fingerprint ink for the Old Bill). Machine lines would be shut down if even the label on the tube/bottle was in the wrong place. Entire batches of colour* would be reworked or scrapped if found to be wrong in any way. Thousands of tubes of oil colour would be squeezed out if the ends of the tube were not folded over correctly (referred to as the ‘nips’, and giving us endless fun saying things like ‘your nips are all wonky’).

 

Given this level of QA, any sort of problem with Humbrol could, and should have been sorted if information had been passed on by Humbrol themselves. I’m wondering if it was/is a percentage thing. If only a very few out of thousands of users complain, was it worth dealing with?

 

As a side note (please take with a pinch of salt, as this is third hand, vaguely remembered knowledge). The change in formula was mainly due to volatility, rather than the H&S/ EU regulations urban myth that gets banded about. And some of the actual colour formulations were mysteriously lost during the handover to Colart, and the W&N tech dept. had to re-formulate some of the actual colours from scratch. (Very similar to the problems Colart had with GamesWorkshop when they made Citadel paints.)

 

As another side note. One of my few claims to fame is that knocking about somewhere I have the last tube of colour ever to be produced in the UK by Winsor & Newton.

 

 My pots of Humbrol acrylics still have ‘made in China’ on them, and I wonder if Colart still makes those?

 

 

Mart

 

*we always referred to paint as ‘colour’. “This is Winsor & Newton, not Dulux. We make colour, not paint here.”

[sapperastro]

I have complained a number of times before to Humbrol, but it seems to go into a black hole and nobody ever seems to bother answering.

 

As for the Humbrol Acrylic...that has been a whole different kettle of fish. The flip top pots had half decent paint in them but half of the pots i bought were dried up. The newer screw top lids have been a disaster, with 80 to 90 percent of them being full of grit that makes the surface perfect for a non slip application, but no good for painting scale models, except perhaps for a mud splatter panzer or something along those lines.

[LaurieS]

3 hours ago, sapperastro said:

As for the Humbrol Acrylic...that has been a whole different kettle of fish. The flip top pots had half decent paint in them but half of the pots i bought were dried up. The newer screw top lids have been a disaster, with 80 to 90 percent of them being full of grit that makes the surface perfect for a non slip application, but no good for painting scale models, except perhaps for a mud splatter panzer or something along those lines.

 

Do I detect and reading between the lines that you you are not awfully keen on Humbrol Acrylic Sapper

 

Laurie