AK 3rd Gen Paint Trouble - More AK Headaches

[GazB]

So, I wanted to do a repaint of my Takom Coelian and wanted the late war or 'what if' colours. Couldn't find the resadagrun in the Real Color range, and wanting to keep the finishes consistent (Mig Ammo always dries satin) I decided to look into the 3rd Gen acrylics as they had the colours I needed in a set. Brilliant. Got them and the thinner. Review vids looked positive. Great.

I just tried them.

They are not at all great. For brush painting, not bad. Good coverage but they still streak. For airbrushing...

 

What a nightmare! Thin it 50/50 with the correct thinner. Spatters and slings paint like web. Thin it 30/70. Inconsistent coverage and it floods. It took an AGE to clean the airbrush out. It was drying around the tip like vinyl paint (contrary to that 'no tip drying' claim) . I tried it with lacquer thinner as suggested as well. Much like AKs 'advice' that you could thin RC with water, this turned out to be bogus as well with similar, goopy results.

 

Should've known after the RC stuff (before I eventually figured them out with no help [and actually being ignored in emails] from the manufacturer) that this stuff was too good to be true. 

 

If I can't get it to work, wasted money on the set, the white, primer and thinner, and will have to pay more to get the appropriate, lighter dunkelgelb from Mig Ammo -.-

 

Does anybody know how to resolve this? I'm at a total loss, and I'm not willing to risk my model at present with these results. My airbrush/mini compressor will spray Mig Ammo, Tamiya, RC, Hobby Aqueous and Stynlrez primer without trouble with appropriate thinning. 

 

Gaz

[George Norman]

Interesting reading. I bought and RAF Modern Aircraft colours set at a show recently due to the decision of the LMS not to re Stock the Humbrol's when then came back. With all I have seen on the net they looked to have a good finish.

 

I Opened the box up and some bottles were leaking. Not a good start

 

Primed the model with Ultimate primer and then overlayed the AK. The Grey Looked well too dark and the green well not a great match either. I did about 40/60 paint to thinners and tried some thinner mixes but had tip clog and splatter. Anthem 155 I am using.

 

The Blu Tack Worms would not stick to the paint either, the Paint was easily Scratched off of the primer with a finger nail despite some lads apply these directly onto plastic with no primer.

 

Bit Peeved with the hue of the colours TBH, I was doing JAG n Grey green wrap some just now will do and overall grey instead. ZZZZzzzz

 

 

 

[TallBlondJohn]

Hmm, I got the Clear Doped linen set and instant nightmare, clogged tip and splatter everywhere. Different thinners, pressures and ratios. Nothing worked.

 

Eventually I stripped down and cleaned the entire airbrush - had to as it was now full of gunk. Spotted a hairline crack in the nozzle tip. Luckily I had a replacement on order anyway that arrived the next day. Put it all back together and the AKs are working fine. I'm mixing separately, not in the jar, about 40% Ak thinner and a drop of Windsor & Newton flow improver out of habit really. All working well. They are a bit fragile for a few days but that's normal for acrylics for me. So far a lot better than Vallejo.

 

Still prefer enamels though!

[JosephLalor]

28 minutes ago, George Norman said:

Interesting reading. I bought and RAF Modern Aircraft colours set at a show recently due to the decision of the LMS not to re Stock the Humbrol's when then came back. With all I have seen on the net they looked to have a good finish.

 

I Opened the box up and some bottles were leaking. Not a good start

 

Primed the model with Ultimate primer and then overlayed the AK. The Grey Looked well too dark and the green well not a great match either. I did about 40/60 paint to thinners and tried some thinner mixes but had tip clog and splatter. Anthem 155 I am using.

 

The Blu Tack Worms would not stick to the paint either, the Paint was easily Scratched off of the primer with a finger nail despite some lads apply these directly onto plastic with no primer.

 

Bit Peeved with the hue of the colours TBH, I was doing JAG n Grey green wrap some just now will do and overall grey instead. ZZZZzzzz

 

 

 

I've recently purchased some of the RAF colours from AK in the bottles with crown-like caps.  I'm not surprised to see you say that the grey is very dark.  Their Dark Sea Grey is actually darker than their Extra Dark Sea Grey, the dark green is lighter than I would expect and their Ocean Grey is  a medium neutral grey.  It seems to be common for manufacturers to base Ocean Grey on BS381C-629.  That might work for the unit-mixed Ocean Grey, but I have my doubts about it as a response to the MAP standard.

[George Norman]

1 hour ago, TallBlondJohn said:

Hmm, I got the Clear Doped linen set and instant nightmare, clogged tip and splatter everywhere. Different thinners, pressures and ratios. Nothing worked.

 

Eventually I stripped down and cleaned the entire airbrush - had to as it was now full of gunk. Spotted a hairline crack in the nozzle tip. Luckily I had a replacement on order anyway that arrived the next day. Put it all back together and the AKs are working fine. I'm mixing separately, not in the jar, about 40% Ak thinner and a drop of Windsor & Newton flow improver out of habit really. All working well. They are a bit fragile for a few days but that's normal for acrylics for me. So far a lot better than Vallejo.

 

Still prefer enamels though!

 

I have a Unused Airbrush that I might try on these paints and we will see who it goes. 

 

  The thin paint also shows up every scratch from sanding etc. I dont think I have the patience for dealing with those to be honest!

 

 

[Casey]

3 hours ago, JosephLalor said:

RAF colours from AK

I still am very unhappy about their advertisement of "Scale Factor" in their paints without even asking me which scale I am building with...

 

For my color matching I simply obtained couple of copies of British Aviation Colours of World War Two (there exist multiple versions of it, I wanted to check if the colors differ between them and the answer is: not much - except Aluminium which is a separate sample in "Green" cover book and it is printed in Blue book, plus it has very different metal texture) and original BS381C.

 

If you need any measurements of those colors, let me know.

 

1 hour ago, George Norman said:

I dont think I have the patience for dealing with those to be honest!

Acrylics should not be equivalent to 'cheap crap that gets scratched by just looking at it'.

 

Since in Acrylics 'dry to touch' does not mean 'done'- I let mine cure for at least 24h before masking - or even longer if the curing had been be slowed down by you use thinners which contain retarders.

 

 

 

 

Edited October 14, 2022 by Casey

[colin]

Not tried them with the airbrush. But didn't think much of them for brush painting, very streaky and didn't thin very well when trying to use multiple thin brush coats, tended to puddle up.

Certainly no match to Vallejo paints.

[GazB]

The only AK 3rd Gen paint I've managed to spray with any success was, weirdly enough, a metallic colour. The rest, no matter the ratios, just refuse to spray well at all. I even tried them in a new airbrush when I first got it, then had to spend ages cleaning it out. I kinda wish my usual shop haunts sold Hataka paints individually, because the ones I've got of those have been brilliant to spray. Bit too pricey to always get sets, sadly. 

 

But sadly whenever AK makes claims they have to be taken with a big heap of salt. Ratios for thinning are rarely ever mentioned either in advertising or release materials, and some of the answers to questions on the Youtube channel were straight up incorrect. In fact, I remember them deleting and reuploading a video after I mentioned some of their claims weren't correct (big one being that I could think Real Color with water, which turns it into goop), and then they'd turned off the comments. 

 

3rd gen is okay for small detail painting, but cannot use it for spraying at all.

 

Gaz

[George Norman]

On 10/14/2022 at 8:27 PM, Casey said:

I still am very unhappy about their advertisement of "Scale Factor" in their paints without even asking me which scale I am building with...

 

For my color matching I simply obtained couple of copies of British Aviation Colours of World War Two (there exist multiple versions of it, I wanted to check if the colors differ between them and the answer is: not much - except Aluminium which is a separate sample in "Green" cover book and it is printed in Blue book, plus it has very different metal texture) and original BS381C.

 

If you need any measurements of those colors, let me know.

 

Acrylics should not be equivalent to 'cheap crap that gets scratched by just looking at it'.

 

Since in Acrylics 'dry to touch' does not mean 'done'- I let mine cure for at least 24h before masking - or even longer if the curing had been be slowed down by you use thinners which contain retarders.

 

 

 

 

 

It was left over 48 hours bud!

[Casey]

37 minutes ago, George Norman said:

 

It was left over 48 hours bud!

Whosh, that suggests something wrong with the paint. I have not much clues there, except it could have been frozen in transport.

 

Regardless - I'd look for alternatives.

Edited October 15, 2022 by Casey

[George Norman]

Hi folks,

 

Well I got out the Top Feed Airbrush I bought about 7 years back, Badge Velocity and what a difference that made. Paint went on pretty well, Little Clogging, Lots of misting building up coverage to too a fair bit to cover a Jag.

 

I used Ultimate primer with Tamiya black and then misted the AK stuff on top.

 

Of course, had the usual disaster of the Masking tape pulling off the paint right down to the plastic even removing the primer. a job to tackle later this week.

 

Otherwise I think the ket is to have a top feed brush for sure with a fine needle.

 

[PhantomBigStu]

Strange I’ve found them great for brushing, though agree about the colours of the raf ones, raf dark green is too light and pru blue is to dark though I think a great match for us aggressor blue 

[Tiger331]

OK.......should have read this first 🤨. I have just had a similar nightmare with the AK Air Series 3G paint this afternoon (bubbling/spattering etc). Tried two different H&S Evolution airbrushes in turn and got the same results, even with 40/60 thinning of the paint. Interestingly, I managed to spread the spattered wet paint across the airframe rather swiftly with a high quality synthetic brush and the result was superb so I am going to abandon using the airbrush for this build and finish off the top surfaces with the brush !.     

[Tiger331]

Happy to report that I have now rescued my latest project from the AK Interactive 3G debacle by resorting to my good ol' AV Vallejo and Ammo MiG stocks with excellent results.....so its not my airbrush that is the problem. I would also endorse the view highlighted by others with regard to leakage and clean-up. I, too, have experienced some issues with leakage in new deliveries. I think it stems from the new design for the caps, which press down hard on the nozzle of the bottle and then split the softer plastic of the latter. I have had several bottles leak in transit and in most cases it was down to a split nozzle. On the question of clean up I totally agree with others regarding the time it has taken to clean an airbrush. After the 'bubbling' incident, with the paint bubbling in the paint cup, I took at least 15 minutes to clean the brush. Some of the paint had actually 'blown back' into the rear mechanism too. My overnight return to using AV Vallejo resulted in a trouble free clean up that took less than half the time.

 

HTH       

[GazB]

After initial teething problems largely down to AK giving poor or even bogus directions for thinning, their Real Color stuff has been the best line of paints for me personally that they do, for airbrushing anyway. Yet they seem to have abandoned adding any more colours to it. 

 

Then again, it wasn't helped when they randomly altered a colour I was using as a better looking NATO green and turned it into an aircraft shade that was completely different, and part of the Vietnam SEA camo colours.

 

Gaz

[ShogunBallistic]

Tried to airbrush these diluted with water and that was a bit of a disaster. Very hard to lay down and dry tipping constantly. I now bought their 3rd gen thinner to see if there's any difference.

 

Also, I sprayed some TS-80 flat on it, it just ate throughout the AK so the primer showed instead. Never seen this with Ammo, AP, Vallejo etc.

[GazB]

5 hours ago, ShogunBallistic said:

Tried to airbrush these diluted with water and that was a bit of a disaster. Very hard to lay down and dry tipping constantly. I now bought their 3rd gen thinner to see if there's any difference.

 

Also, I sprayed some TS-80 flat on it, it just ate throughout the AK so the primer showed instead. Never seen this with Ammo, AP, Vallejo etc.

It's such a weird paint that doesn't seem to do anything that they claimed. I've only used it for minor brush painting. Only one of their colours sprayed decently for me and it was a metallic, oddly enough.

 

Gaz

[TheKinksFan]

If there's too many negative experiences with a product, it usually means only one thing: there's something wrong with it. I've had pretty similar experiences than others, some colours sprayed a bit better, but in general not great.

I suspect that there might be different formulas and different batches of these 3rd gen paints. With different properties. AK Interactive doesn't make the paints themselves, and even though the stuff is packed in the bottles that look the same, it could be that paint itself is different. We know for sure that there's at least two formulas of the Real Colors paint. First they build up the hype about a paint that you can thin with anything. Then change the formula -lacquer thinner only- and never officially tell that the formula is different. The paint itself (RC) is very good, but I have a very low opinion of the company. If you ever have a problem, don't bother to email the customer service, I bet the emails go straight into the spam folder. 

On 14/10/2022 at 20:10, JosephLalor said:

Their Dark Sea Grey is actually darker than their Extra Dark Sea Grey, the dark green is lighter than I would expect and their Ocean Grey is  a medium neutral grey.

Their Real Colors versions are the same, something is not right when extra dark is lighter than dark. I had to get MRP's versions. It doesn't look right if there's a biplane with the shadow compensation scheme, and the colours on the lower wing are darker than on the upper, when it should vice versa.

[GazB]

5 hours ago, TheKinksFan said:

If there's too many negative experiences with a product, it usually means only one thing: there's something wrong with it. I've had pretty similar experiences than others, some colours sprayed a bit better, but in general not great.

I suspect that there might be different formulas and different batches of these 3rd gen paints. With different properties. AK Interactive doesn't make the paints themselves, and even though the stuff is packed in the bottles that look the same, it could be that paint itself is different. We know for sure that there's at least two formulas of the Real Colors paint. First they build up the hype about a paint that you can thin with anything. Then change the formula -lacquer thinner only- and never officially tell that the formula is different. The paint itself (RC) is very good, but I have a very low opinion of the company. If you ever have a problem, don't bother to email the customer service, I bet the emails go straight into the spam folder. 

Their Real Colors versions are the same, something is not right when extra dark is lighter than dark. I had to get MRP's versions. It doesn't look right if there's a biplane with the shadow compensation scheme, and the colours on the lower wing are darker than on the upper, when it should vice versa.

I emailed AK a few times when RC first dropped and I thinned my paints with X-20A (as they said I could), only to find it did nothing, and that clean up with water (which they also said) turned it into a goopy mess. RC is fine for me to use now, using the lacquer thinner, but the company as a whole is incredibly vague on how to use their stuff. They don't provide thinning ratios unless its a how to video done a long time after by a third party, and they make a lot of claims on every single product that never seems to ring true in practice. They straight up changed one colour of RC I was using as a replacement colour for NATO green (because the actual green is always too dark). The colour I had was perfect for it, and then they changed it to a deeper shade to match an aircraft scheme without making it a separate shade. I had to buy up two pots of the colour where I could find it and ask them if the caps were clear first to be sure it was the correct one.

 

I wish more places just gave you nice, simple thinning ratios like Hataka does.

 

Gaz

[TheKinksFan]

2 hours ago, GazB said:

I emailed AK a few times when RC first dropped and I thinned my paints with X-20A (as they said I could), only to find it did nothing, and that clean up with water (which they also said) turned it into a goopy mess. RC is fine for me to use now, using the lacquer thinner, but the company as a whole is incredibly vague on how to use their stuff. They don't provide thinning ratios unless its a how to video done a long time after by a third party, and they make a lot of claims on every single product that never seems to ring true in practice. They straight up changed one colour of RC I was using as a replacement colour for NATO green (because the actual green is always too dark). The colour I had was perfect for it, and then they changed it to a deeper shade to match an aircraft scheme without making it a separate shade. I had to buy up two pots of the colour where I could find it and ask them if the caps were clear first to be sure it was the correct one.

It feels like they are thinking that once the customer has made the purchase : you are on your own now, we already got your money. I once asked something about an ammo mig product through their facebook page, and got a polite and friendly answer. AK's style is the opposite, never have I heard that anyone who emailed them got a response. I feel strongly that a company should always reply the customer, sooner or later. It just rude to ignore buying customers.

That's annoying when a perfectly good paint is changed. Mr Hobby did the same with their ANA 611 US interior green H58. It was a good match, untill they changed it to match Mr Color C28, and now it's almost like yellow zinc chromate.

[dogsbody]

I haven't used any of the AK Real paints that I bought a while back. I've also bought a bottle of their thinner.

 

Is there anything in particular I should be aware of/look out for?

 

 

 

 

Chris

[GazB]

21 hours ago, TheKinksFan said:

It feels like they are thinking that once the customer has made the purchase : you are on your own now, we already got your money. I once asked something about an ammo mig product through their facebook page, and got a polite and friendly answer. AK's style is the opposite, never have I heard that anyone who emailed them got a response. I feel strongly that a company should always reply the customer, sooner or later. It just rude to ignore buying customers.

That's annoying when a perfectly good paint is changed. Mr Hobby did the same with their ANA 611 US interior green H58. It was a good match, untill they changed it to match Mr Color C28, and now it's almost like yellow zinc chromate.

I got one reply back from AK on the matter, but nothing beyond that on a follow up. They even went as far as to delete the original version of the Youtube video that included my original comment asking about the thinning, where I was told X-20A and water would work, and re-uploaded it, likely in an attempt to hide that exchange. 

 

19 hours ago, dogsbody said:

I haven't used any of the AK Real paints that I bought a while back. I've also bought a bottle of their thinner.

 

Is there anything in particular I should be aware of/look out for?

 

 

 

 

Chris

Hi, Chris. I've found a roughly 50/50 ratio of paint to the high compatibility thinner works pretty well. I usually use that thinner to flush and clean the cup afterward. I tend to measure it drop for drop into the cup with two pipettes, one for the paint and one for the thinner. Lighter colours may need a tad more thinner, just to stop speckling, but not too much

 

Gaz

[dogsbody]

2 hours ago, GazB said:

Hi, Chris. I've found a roughly 50/50 ratio of paint to the high compatibility thinner works pretty well. I usually use that thinner to flush and clean the cup afterward. I tend to measure it drop for drop into the cup with two pipettes, one for the paint and one for the thinner. Lighter colours may need a tad more thinner, just to stop speckling, but not too much

 

Gaz

 

 

Thanks, Gaz.

 

I've got these droppers I've used before. I put a bit of tape on so I can measure similar amounts of fluid. It's worked quite well before.

 

 

 

 

Chris

[GazB]

1 hour ago, dogsbody said:

 

 

Thanks, Gaz.

 

I've got these droppers I've used before. I put a bit of tape on so I can measure similar amounts of fluid. It's worked quite well before.

 

 

 

 

Chris

No worries, hope it goes smoothly, pun intended, hah.

 

Gaz

[colin]

On 11/22/2022 at 1:00 AM, dogsbody said:

I haven't used any of the AK Real paints that I bought a while back. I've also bought a bottle of their thinner.

 

Is there anything in particular I should be aware of/look out for?

 

 

 

 

Chris

Never thinned them with their own thinner, but can confirm they thin and spray brilliantly with Mr Colour Levelling thinner