I'm really new at this, so there are lots of things I'm trying to learn.

First: how the heck do you get the pieces off the bloody sprues without damage? I have a pair of sprue clippers, but I still often seem to damage the plastic. I never see any marks on experienced modellers work however. Do they have a technique, or do they just sand and fill any damage?

Second: dust effects? Suppose I'm building a tank in the summer dust at Kursk. I have some 'dust effect' in grey by AK products. But what's the best way to apply it? Like a wash? Should pigments go on first, or after?

Third: chipping effects. Some people suggest hairspray and then actually rubbing off some paint. Or, some people suggest using a sponge to paint on simulated chips. What's easiest for a rookie like me?

Thanks in advance,

Nathan.

I was told to thin Tamiya paints with the X-20 thinner

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I was told to thin Tamiya paints with the X-20 thinner

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Tamiya X20 is an ENAMEL PAINT THINNER, if you are spraying
Tamiya Acrylics, you need to use their X-20A which is
made for their acrylic line of paints.

These paints also work very well with their lacquer thinner(yellow cap)
but you may not like the extra smell of the lacquer thinner.

Cheers,

Maybe I will start posting pictures as I go.

I'm building a 1/35th Tamiya Pz. III ausf. N.

I just put the dark yellow base coat on today. Looks good. Happy with it.

I'm doing a vehicle from Kursk, with red brown and dark green stripes. I've never done camo w. an airbrush, and I'm hoping I didn't bite off more than I could chew. I tried spraying some camo lines on my practise Tiger I hull. But both the red and green splattered and generally didn't give me anything like a fine line of the kind required.

Filling a new Tamiya bottle the rest of the way with X20A should give you about a 60/40 mix, which is close to perfect for Tamiya. If you airbrushed with that spraybooth and a respirator, and you report paint pooling on the model and you can smell the paint through the respirator, that indicates to me a clear problem - you are putting out way too much paint at way too high a pressure. Cut your air pressure in half and turn down your needle pre-set knob. Play with your needle setting until it sprays a nearly invisible mist at that air pressure. Don't just keep turning up the air pressure until your airbrush is spurting out visible clouds of paint; you might as well just open the paint jar and throw it at the model. Practice on some newspaper until you get the pressure / needle right and you can control your spray patterns. None of us learned this overnight, it takes years to get good at airbrushing. And sometimes when the stars are not aligned, even the best of us have a day when our airbrushes are our worst enemies.

NO. That is the needle chuck nut. Your NEO does not have a pre-set knob. You'll just have to learn not to haul back on the trigger so far, so as not to release so much paint. If you pull back easy, you can do those little pencil lines you want to do. Try practicing signing your name with the airbrush over and over until it looks exactly like your signature in pen. Then you'll be ready to do those lines on your model.