How to clean a clear canopy with overspray

[DrumBum]

Greetings all,

 

I am building the Tamiya 1/48 F-4B and accidently left a small drop of AK Laquer on the rear canopy after mask removal.

 

I am rather new to Laquer and have not needed to solve this problem before.

 

The canopy has been dipped in pledge floor polish.

 

I tried to scrape it off with a wooden toothpick but it has lightly smeared the paint into a larger but thinner area.

 

Its not much and probably will go un noticed however I would like to try to rectify it.

 

Any thoughts as to what fluid would remove the AK but not damage the floor polish dipped canopy?

 

cheers all

 

 

[ckw]

I don't think there is anything which will remove lacquer without removing the polish. In any case it is quite likely the lacquer will already have eaten into the polish.

 

Mr Color Levelling Thinner is my go to paint remover, and will not damage the plastic or fog clear parts. But it will remove your polish. Just be very careful not to get any on paint you want to keep. Whatever you do, I think you will need to re-polish the canopy.

 

Cheers

 

Colin

[DrumBum]

On 10/4/2023 at 1:29 AM, ckw said:

I don't think there is anything which will remove lacquer without removing the polish. In any case it is quite likely the lacquer will already have eaten into the polish.

 

Mr Color Levelling Thinner is my go to paint remover, and will not damage the plastic or fog clear parts. But it will remove your polish. Just be very careful not to get any on paint you want to keep. Whatever you do, I think you will need to re-polish the canopy.

 

Cheers

 

Colin

Thanks for the reply. As a follow up, I used a plutanite polishing cloth and some tamiya fine polish and it worked a charm.

[PatG]

Will Mr Color Levelling Thinner also work for generally cleaning all lacquer paints (such as Tamiya) and be able to flush out my airbrush and clean my brushes as I've never used lacquers before and don't want to start until I know how to handle them?

 

Or is there a more generic lacquer thinner, akin to white spirit for enamels, that I could use as the Mr Color stuff is definitely not cheap.

 

Pat.

[ckw]

MCLT will do the job, but as you say its an expensive cleaner. For cleaning I use generic cellulose thinner (5 litre containers) from Amazon. But if your airbrush uses rubber seals it will eat them. I don't use this for thinning paint though, only MCLT which I find works perfectly for both lacquers and acrylics. I've only recently started using lacquers (moving from mostly enamels and some acrylics), and find them better in every aspect, and as my current paint stock needs replacing will go for lacquers. Juts remember that lacquers are 'hot' and will eat into any underlying acrylic or enamel (though you might get away with a very light spray).

 

Cheers

 

Colin