The Little World

AK paints are good material to work with – I found this out by buying a couple of box sets at the Melbourne plastic model exhibition. They are three-bottle collections for RAF fighter aircraft of WW2. One is for early schemes and one for late. Think green/brown/sky and grey/green/grey.

Before I purchased them I asked the seller if they were compatible with Mr. Color Levelling Thinner. We searched the internet and found an AK site that demonstrated that they were – and also that they were suitable for a number of other diluents.

I’ve just been spraying a Gloster Meteor F.1 with them and have been pleased with the result – but there is a catch – they take less thinner as they are more dilute than the Mr. Color equivalents. Too much thinner and you have a runny mix.

I shoot at about 18 psi through a .3 nozzle and this has proved perfect for the mix – as long as you use only 3 drops of thinner to a colour cup of paint.

Now is the time, however, to put forward a thought for scale modellers – it might not be revolutionary, but I am still prepared to overturn buses and build barricades…

We mix our paints and thin them for our various purposes using much the same scientific methods and precise measurements as the three witches in ” Macbeth “. If we do not put eye of newt and toe of frog into our air brushes it is only because Testors hasn’t bottled them yet. Our proportioning is all  approximate – even if we use eye droppers. We try to end up with what the internet tells us we should have but often as not we don’t even get that. Our paint is too thick or too thin and our air pressure is anything from nothing at all to a force 9 gale.

As well as a definitive pronouncement – in English – from the factory as to the exact air pressure, I want some sort of a measurement for the viscosity and flow of the paint. Some little tool that can measure how thin or thick each paint should be. It need not be an electronic calibrator – though that would be nice. It might be as simple as a moulded block of metal that you drop some paint on. As it flows over the sloped block it either covers or reveals numbers – and you can add more paint or more thinner until you get the number you want. Thereafter each paint can be diluted to the same number.

Or it might be a calibrated paper material you drop paint on. Too thin soaks straight through and drips out. Too thick doesn’t penetrate and show on the the bottom. Just right wets the bottom layer and shows but no more.

Or we just get ready-to-spray paint in our favourite type.