Looking for some help spraying camouflage (over zimmerit). Base coat is dark yellow, camouflage patches are olive green. I mixed the olive green as follows: 20 drops XF-58 + 12 drops XF-60 + 2 drops XF-55 and thinned it roughly 50:50 with Tamiya acrylic thinner. Air pressure is about 10-15 psi and my brush is a Grex Genesis.XG. Even moving in close and angling in toward the area to be sprayed I find that I get overspray. Any suggestions?

Bill,

Are you getting spray past the stencils or are you getting too much paint on the stencil and thus runs?

Can we see a picture of the extent of the overspray. This might help. some overspray is normal.

Mark - I'm not using stencils, just spraying free hand. If I can't figure out the overspray, then I might try using paper held off the model with Blue-Tak.

John - Yeah, I figure there's not avoiding some overspray ... I just lack a point of reference to understand whether what I'm seeing is reasonable. Anyway, here are some photos of my crash test dummy (not the real model). The lighter shade of green you see on one side of the turret is the shade I'll be spraying.

there can be a lot of factors coming into play. Sometimes too much thinner means the paint dries to fast in the air, make the paint come out fuzzy. The first thing i would try is increasing your air pressure. most people say "never go over 15 psi," but if i did that, i would get splatter everywhere. The actual pressure varies on your airbrush. For my Iwata HP-B i typically use 24-28 psi. I know that number might make some people cringe, but it works for me!

You could also have a damaged nozzle. Some jars of Tamiya paint can be funky. I usually have overspray problems with Dark Yellow. Now that i have switched to Vallejo i dont have these problems

Try upping your pressure and inspecting your nozzle and let us know what you find.

Bill,

I thin Tamiya 50/50 like you, get in close, less than 1mm, dial it down to 5 - 7 PSI and draw the outline of the area with no overspray at all.

The lighter shade has a fine over spray which is fine by my standards. The darker green has a little excessive splater. Try the above recomendations and report back.

If you like the camo the way it is.

I would suggest now to drybrush the overspray away. If you are carful, it should hide the green speckels without showing to much brush marks.

You can fix the overspray issue later, but for now, if it is still happening, I wouldn't keep trying to airbrush the model. If you try to airbrush the green away, it will look weird.

- Painting green over yellow looks different from painting yellow over green.

Thanks for everyone's input. I experimented with the air pressure, moving it down to 5-7 psi as Matt suggested and then up to 25 psi where Jon gets good results. At the lower air pressure I was able to get a fine line if I put the airbrush right up to the model, but had to clean the tip every couple minutes in order to keep the paint flowing. At the higher pressure I was able to get decent results as well but had to move quickly to keep the paint from pooling.

Here are the photos of my results. There's still some overspray but I've got to keep moving. I'm slow as it is ...

I noticed your pictures are further away. Hiding something?


Ok no, I'm kidding. I think the camo looks very good and should weather nicely. Remember, these things would have overspray in the RL. Also, you are painting a zimmerit'ed surface, so it will be harder to get sharp lines.

What campaign is this for? Western or Eastern front?

Looks fine now. Good work!

Mark - I'm never opposed to cherry picking the best photos! Seriously, the overspray is still evident in places but far less so than before. Besides re-spraying the camo I went back with the base color when I was done and touched up the worst areas. This scheme is for a vehicle from 1/s.Pz.Abt. 503 that was knocked out by the British during Operation Bluecoat in August 1944.

John - Thank you for helping me sort this out. By the way, the recommendation I received from Mike Rinaldi was to a) try thinning my paint to 60:40 or even 70:30 or b) try substituting Tamiya's lacquer thinner which he believes to be much better for airbrushing tight camouflage schemes. I don't have a vented spray booth at the moment, but something to keep in mind going forward.

Bill, as you've found out, just about everyone has their own method of dealing with over spray while doing fine detail work.

For me, my procedures are based on the fact that I use a Paasche 1H gun. I have one gun setup with their smallest setup, the #1 tip, needle, & cone. I usually thin my paint 50/50, but for close up detail work I go to 3/2 mix. I normally paint at 18-20 psi, but drop that down to 10-15 psi depending on the weather conditions.

I test on scrap plastic till I get it where I'm happy with the results. Then paint the outlines 1st. Open up a little and fill in.

No matter how careful I am, I do get some over spray, which I clean up by going back to the base color. Sometimes the shape and angle of the part just makes over spray happen. If I can't clean it up with the base color, I'll very lightly with a small flat tip brush, dry brush the offending areas. If there is any slight difference in the finish, weathering, and the final flat coats make it virtually invisible.

To be honest, I think that camp looks excellent. Some overspray is not bad because if you look at photos of real tanks, they sometimes have overspray. Anyways, I had this problem too with my airbrush. My solution was using very thinned paint and just brushing on to paint over the overspray. You just have to make sure the paint is thin so then you don't have brush strokes showing up. Hope this helps.

-Joe