Hi,

I can't help but feeling dumb when asking this, but how can I get good gloss coats with an airbrush?

Instead of brushing on a couple of coats of future prior to decaling, I decided to try airbrushing on my latests build. No luck with that so far.

As I've used mainly future for my gloss coats, I loaded that to my airbrush first. It goes on well, but doesn't build a gloss coat, more like a satin semi-gloss with a slightly pebbly look to it.
After doing some research and finding out that getting that pebbly finish isn't that unusual with Future, I tried Microscale's gloss. Ran into the same problem with that, the coats I get are nowhere near as gloss I'd like them to be.

Am I doing something wrong? Is there a specific technique for achieving the high gloss needed for decals? I think I might not be laying down a coat heavy enough, but blasting away with a higher paintflow gives me the creeps about flooding the surface of the model, resulting in runs and other nasty results.

Future I airbrushed straight from the bottle, trying out pressures between 10 and 20 psi. Microscale's gloss I thinned 50/50 with distilled water and sprayed at around 15 psi.

Any tips and pointers are greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance

the pebbly finish you mentioned sounds like you are getting the future drying too quickly and it is causing a rough texture instead of a smooth gloss coat.

Try thinning it slightly to lengthen it's drying time, and giving a slightly heavier coat rather than dusting it. 15psi is quite low I usually spray much higher than that, and I have not had future dry to a pebbly finish.

what are the conditions where you spray ? hot/humid?

I actually use lower airpressure when using future or any other gloss coat.

As with any other paint, you want to build up multiple layers. Use your regular airpressure for a couple of dust coats, then drop your airpressure to as low as you can go and still spray, and put a heavier coat on what you are doing. When you go with the final coat, you want to spray a little heavier, and a little slower. It will probably take a little practice, so try it on something you don't care about to get the feel of it.

I Painted a Tamiya RX-7 R1 with Vallejo Copper over a black base coat. And then topped it with future for a gloss, after 3 coats using the method above....I didn't even need to polish it.



Not the greatest photo, but you can see enough of a shine in the gloss, to see a reflection of the ticket in the side of the car.

Thanks for the tips, I'll try them out.

As for my painting conditions, I guess it's about normal room temperature (20-22 celcius, give or take). Relative air humitidy is about 52%, of course assuming it's showing at least somewhat accurate readings.
(I knew that hygrometer I have in my room was useful some day )

I dont even bother with all that stuff. I just use Tamiya's spray clear and it works fine!

I did similar. I went to walmart and bought a Krylon Gloss Clear. No problems. Also bought Krlon Matt Clear

@Eetu - did you ever figure this out? I'm having the exact same problems with future and with the Vallejo Gloss Varnish!