I'm wondering, I just finished air brushing my Tamiya Chieftain 1/35 in XF61 and I used an entire bottle covering everything, lower hull/upper/skirts/wheels/turret..is that normal?its pretty much my first real airbrush job.

I decant a whole bottle of Tamiya paint into 3 jars with equal amounts in each, which are then thinned at about 40% paint 60% thinners. I would expect to be able to spray paint nearly 2 kits with each thinned jar, and so I would suggest the paint you have used is either not thinned enough or fairly heavy on the model.

Hi

I also find that if I use Tamiya Paint then I get about one model per bottle but if I use Vallejo Model Color I get about 4 or 5 models per bottle.

So personaly I have moved over to Model Color when ever possible.

Paul

hi there
if i use tamiya i thin it with tamiya thinners around 70 30 to 60 40 thats paint to thinners ,and after pre shading i would normally lay 2 to 3 thin coats of the base colour ,it dose sound you have used alot of paint, if i can help dont hesitate to ask

I should clarify that now that Tamiya paint is sold in 10ml jars I only fill 1 jar which still easily covers 2 models of the type you mention.

I use Tamiya as well and thin it with windex so the paint has the viscosity of milk. I don't know the ratio percentage. However, I use less than half the jar. So using a whole jar for one model seems like a lot to me as well.

I'm wondering do you do a primer coat? If you don't that would account for the amount of paint used. It would take a lot more paint to cover the plastic without a primer coat.

Hmm, a whole bottle of dark green to cover a model moulded in dark green plastic certainly seems excessive.

Personally, I would probably see 3-4 models out of one jar of paint.

It comes down to a number of factors, including:

- How much you thin your paint. Tamiya acrylics have a fairly heavy pigment load and can be thinned quite heavily (I often use 3-4 parts thinner to one part paint) and will still cover sufficiently.
- Airbrush model/type: Internal or external mix? Single or double action? Top or bottom feed? All of these factors will affect how much paint you use
- High or low air pressure? Higher air pressure may, to an extent, cause more overspray and more paint loss as a result.
- Your individual technique may also be a factor. Do you get up close and personal using lower pressure and less paint flow or do you hang back and nuke it from orbit?

As you develop your technique, I'm sure that you'll begin to use less paint - it's all part of the learning process.




Hi Paul,

It's difficult to directly compare bottle to bottle usage between Tamiya and VMC, because VMC comes in 17ml jars so you're already ahead, volume wise, by 70% (compared to Tamiya's 10ml). Also, straight out of the jar, VMC are considerably thicker than Tamiya in consistency so straight away, you need to thin the paint more, so in terms of outright coverage, you're always going to go further with VMC.

I didn't use a primer or anything, I actually found a few spots that I missed in my initial coat so I used like 1 bottle and maybe 5% of another bottle in my 2nd attack.
The paint was thinned not very scientifically, I just poured some mineral water covering about 1/10 of the airbrush cup[Paasche VL, bottom feed double action] and then the rest of it was paint..probably not thinned enough but I was afraid of thinning to much as I over thinned some Createx paint trying to practice camo on scrape pieces and it came out horrible, the paint was pushed to the sides and it looked like its a walk way or something.
I spray at 18 PSI about 15-25cm away from the model.

I did camo on it using Tamiya NATO black and it came out pretty good, very subtle, I thinned that at about 50/50 with mineral water/paint and I used a really small amount of paint maybe less then 5% of bottle, I even had leftover and poured it to the sink.

I think for my next model I'll use a primer and see the results.

Well that explains part of it. The Paasche VL is known to be sometihng of a paint hog, meaning it's sometihng akin to a fire hose.

As a second point of note, don't thin Tamiya acrylic with water. It's one of the least suitable thinners. Use Tamiya X-20A acrylic thinner, Isopropyl alcohol or denatured (ethyl) alcohol. You should be able to push X-20A or Iso to about 3 parts to one part paint before it starts to bead and run. You can push denatured alcohol considerably further. Spray from about 10-15cm from the surface.

The finish on the paint looks ok to me, I guess it will be better using the designated Tamiya thinner,...I'll give it a try as it looks allot more economical to create 2 bottles out of every Tamiya jar.

WRT the VL, after I finished shooting the entire bottle first thing I did was to immediately disassemble it and clean and man - there was enormous amount of paint in it! I took it to the sink and gave each individual part a good wash and it was incredible the amount of paint that was coming out of it

Hi zzez13,

In addition to the other advice that you've gotten, consider for your next project buying a couple of eye droppers to measure and dispense your paints and thinners.

I use the ones from a drug store that have glass barrels and removable rubber bulbs. These are easy to clean and are not effected by any kind of thinners that I've ever used (X-20A, mineral spirits, laquer thinners, acetone, etc.) The eye droppers should be pretty inexpensive.

In addition to using the X-20A Tamiya thinner, also try mixing the airbrush mixture in another container like a small disposable bathroom cup (the plastic kind hold up better than the paper, wax coated ones). Once you've mixed your paints in this cup, transfer the mixture to your airbrush cup.

This is a much more controlled method for mixing and reducing your airbrush paints, although with experience, you can mix in the airbrush cup too. But as you're just trying to figure things out right now, the added step will help you see where things are working or not.

Measure your paint and thinner (reducer) by the drop using the eye dropper using some of the ratios recommended in the earlier replies. Record the ratios and observe your results to see if the next time you need more or less thinner for the paint type (manufacturer), color, humidity, and temperature. As you gain more experience, you won't need to record the ratios every time since you will learn what thinning ratios are best for your painting style and average conditions. If your airbrush setup allows you to adjust the air pressure, then record these values too.

(Air pressure, humidity, temperature, paint-thinner ratio, and paint volume / flow are the variables that you have to constantly adjust for when airbrushing. By paying attention to them as you learn, you'll get an intutitve feel and the experience you need to airbrush well faster than if you just randomly mix and paint. You don't have to be anal about it: You just need to be aware and pay attention to the variables.)

Finally, by measuring your paint, you will have the tools ready for when you start to make your own custom paint color mixes. This is the next step to starting to do pre- and post shading and some other more "advanced" painting effects. By measuring the colors out by drops, you can easily record the color mix ratios for later use.

Mixing your paints by the drop is very economical, too. For an average base coat, I'll likely use three layers of paint in a pre- and post shading effect. Each coat of paint will take from 40 to 60 drops of color (depending on how large the model is). For reference, the large Tamiya paint bottles are about 30 ml (approximately 1 oz) and the small ones are about 15 ml (approximately 1/2 oz), and 180 drops of paint is about 7-8 ml (about 1/5 th - 20% of a large Tamiya bottle).

So depending on what size bottle of Tamiya paints you were using, and how much you left in the airbrush and lost with over spray, you might have used about 4 or 5 times as much paint as needed or only slightly more than was needed. Hard to tell, really, without some precise numbers.

A better way to judge whether you used too much paint would be to look at your model and see if any of the fine details were lost or "softened" because they're covered by a heavy paint coat. If not, then you're doing OK where it counts on the model.

HTH,
Mike

Tamiya paint is famous for having a large amount of the pigment sitting as sludge in the bottom of the jar, I overcome this problem by emptying the paint into the jar and putting the thinners into the paint jar before adding it to the spray bottle, this leaves the original jar clean. If you are mixing small amounts of paint and thinners during a spray job, I would advise putting a small ball bearing in the Tamiya paint jar to help disperse the pigment settled on the bottom of the jar and this will help you avoid the problem of different paint strengths resulting in slightly different colours.