The Little World

Say that in a Matt Ball accent.

The question of drying times has arisen in the past and I’ve made decisions that have bit me in the Arsenal F.C. Progressing from Tamiya acrylics to Mr. Color lacquers and modelling in an outside workshop/shed for much of the year has meant that there were a whole raft of variables – all the time.

I think I’ve got the thing sorted…until my next inexplicable failure. Here is what I’ve learned. It applies to my shed on my street in my state only – you’re on your own elsewhere.

a. Mr. Color Levelling Thinner thins nearly everything, including Tamiya acrylics and AK airplane colours. So, for that matter does the standard Mr. Color blue-label thinner – what I refer to as regular thinner.

b. The difference between the two is the retarder or levelling agent in the former – you play it as a card when you are dealing with high summer temperatures or want a very smooth gloss finish. Otherwise you use the regular blue-label.

c. Mix in a separate cup – not in your airbrush. I use a stainless steel liquor shot measure picked up at a kitchen store. Foolproof, cleanable, and unbreakable. I mix with stainless steel spoons made by Ustar – very inexpensive in the hobby shop. Repeatable, cleanable, and again unbreakable. I have stopped pinching wooden coffee stirrers from the break rooms of Australia.

d. The consistency I mix for is not quite the ” milk ” that other sources specify. My bar measuring cup has a funnel shape that helps me.

If I spoon in a batch of paint – and I spoon based upon whether it is a fighter, twin, or four-engine plane, and whether I am going to cover top and bottom with the same batch – it goes a certain way up the side. If I then add whichever thinner to go twice the distance up the side it gives me proportionally more – say 60-40%. Automatic dilution and always to a consistent concentration.

Whatever I do after that is nozzle and air pressure control and that’s on the airbrush itself.

e. Thin coats, dried off with spare air from whichever brush is not in use, built up patiently, is the answer. I have done it differently when ignorant or lazy and the work has suffered.

f. And leave it to set and harden after you have gotten the surface you wanted. Undercoats need 4 hours, top coats need 6. Varnishes need two.

If this seems excessive, reflect that your fingerprints are fine on the ends of your fingers or on jewellery that you are stealing from a Duchess…but you do not want them to appear anywhere on your model airplane. Wait until the surfaces will no longer react – and the understrata have hardened – before you do the next thing. Build three models at a time and go from one task to another while the chemistry works.

g. Use regular thinner up until the shed temperature hits 32º Celsius. Between 33º and 43º use levelling thinner. Between 44º-50º go in the house and drink beer.