Introduction

In my recent review of Badger’s Renegade Krome airbrush (Reviewed here), I used Badgers Military paint set to check the performance of the airbrush and now I am going to cover the paints in their own right.

Contents

With this military colour paint set you get 7 colours which are;
• 16-94 field drab
• 16-96 olive drab
• 16-97 camouflage gray
• 16-100 European dark green
• 16-102 forest green
• 16-103 armor sand
• 16-105 medium green FSC 33102

Review

The paints in this set are packaged in 1oz (30ml) pots, with each pot having a seal attached to the pot under the lid. This seal seems to be a foam based product which does not peel off easily but needs to be cut away, so this seal should ensure no accidental spillage during transit if ordered online. The paints in this range are acrylic and the paint in each pot is described as perfectly thinned ready for use with an airbrush and gives good coverage indicating fair pigmentation. Brush painting is also possible with them requiring two coats minimum. The pots are opaque which does make paint selection difficult if you are like me and tend to use your eye for colour selection in some cases.

Drying times will vary depending on the conditions where you are, here in the UK drying time was 5 to 10 minutes depending of course on you laying down the paint in a reasonable thickness. Brush painting caught me out as that was also dry in 5 to 10 minutes and touch dry in 15 to 20 minutes, I would still recommend leaving at least an hour before applying a second coat of paint using either application method. When dry the paint is reasonably durable as even running my thumb nail across it did not cause any obvious damage to the finish.

Cleaning the brush and airbrush is easily accomplished using water, which in the case of the brush is perhaps the easiest cleaning task I have attempted. Holding the brush under running water completely cleaned all of the paint out of the brush in seconds rather than minutes, and when I wiped the brush with clean tissue paper no paint residue was left on the tissue. While the same is probably true of airbrush cleaning I would still recommend blowing some cleaning product through the airbrush as well as water.

Conclusion

These acrylic paints from Badger have no obvious faults that I can detect, there is a slight odor to them but it is not over powering or repugnant. They are in my opinion more user friendly than my usual paint of choice (Tamiya acrylic range), in every way from use to cleaning with the possible exception that drying time when sprayed is equal. They do however have a weakness that can only be cured by Badger themselves, which is a very limited colour range and as I have never seen them in the UK I am guessing limited availability.

If you get a chance to use these paints give them a go as I think you will be pleasantly surprised by their use. The only thing that stops me highly recommending this paint range is the limited colour choice available.