The Little World

We are often told of the benefits of hindsight. I wonder – no-one I know has a picture of their backside on their wall. Mostly it is faces and family groups. In fact, I don’t think I can remember seeing a family group from the rear. So I suspect the old saying is bunk.

There is, however some value in looking at what you did before in the workshop and comparing it with what you are doing now. Good or bad, there is something to contemplate.

In my case it is the amount of paint used for any particular job  now – as compared to the same job with previous equipment and practices. I am always trying to get the exact amount of paint mixed for any particular job, with no running out half-way and no big puddle of leftover colour to discard. Part of it is frugality and part is a moral revulsion at wicked waste*.

My first airbrushing efforts were crude, but I did realise the need for consistency in the paint mix. I adopted the practice of  mixing the paint with the thinner based upon teaspoonfuls in a glass cup. It was pretty scientific for someone who didn’t know what he was doing…and several paint jobs came out well. But pouring from the bottles was a real mess.

Then I thought up siphoning paint and thinner from their respective containers with a plastic soda straw. It worked and let me mark the amount on the side of the straw for equal measurements. I never actually sucked paint into my mouth, but there was nothing to prevent it…

Finally, I saw a Flory Models YouTube presentation during my hospital stay that showed the slosh and guess method – and seemed to be successful. I tried it, and am also pleased with the results – and I seem to have less wastage in paint.

Part of it is the new airbrush and the new use of Mr. Color paint. Mr. Color is never clogged up in the bottles and the Mr. Hobby Levelling Thinner seems to work perfectly with it. If the proportion is not exactly right, I can dip a bit from the pot to correct it. And another thing that Phil Flory showed – it seems to be alright to return unused paint to the bottle, even if it has been diluted. This makes sense – after all, the proportion of thinner to paint is going to be swamped by the stock solution in the bottle, and even if it eventually approaches the spraying dilution, it cannot, by definition, become thinner than this.

I still have not tried another idea that a YouTuber *( That’s a video potato…) put forward. He advised us to open a new bottle of Tamiya acrylic paint and note that there was a space between the top of the paint and the top of the jar. We are to fill this space with Tamiya X20A thinner and that will yield the exact consistency for spray painting. It sounds like an idiot idea, but I am prepared to risk a $ 5 pot of paint to try it. The new airbrush might love it. Idiots have been right before.

*  I do save the dregs of enamels in a large bottle for use painting a Canadian back porch. Or a battleship.