Working with Mr Color Laquers

[FlyingPika]

Hi, ok i bought some of these laquers from rainbow ten (Mr Hobby kind).

I also bought a small bottle of mr thinner to thin them for air brushing.

The troubles i having is trying to clean my airbrush. I can't afford to spray endless cups of mr thinner trying to clean my airbrush, is there any practical atlernative?

I find normal turps/thinners has a weird reaction with the laquers that make it into this sorta foamy sludge.

And also how does one go about cleaning ones airbrush? My attempts arent working to well, and take forever to change colours.

And also getting the paint into the cup, is there a beteer way then using a tooth pick to drop it in (takes foreva).

Thanks for any help

[bad andy]

All lacquers should clean up well with lacquer thinner. Go to a hardware atore and get some. You may even find it works just as well for thinning, saving the cost of getting the elusive "Mr. Thinner"

To ease your toothpicks woes, go to a hobby store and get waht are called 'pipettes.' They are similar to eyedroppers, made of plastic and very inexpensive. Get a bunch - they beat toothpicks anyday.

[tetsujin]

There are dangers associated with using hardware store varieties of lacquer thinner for thinning paint. That type of lacquer thinner is also rather good at melting styrene, so if too much of it comes in contact with your model it's possible that the surface will become messed up. However, this is a risk I've mainly encountered as a result of direct application (using it to try to remove paint, etc.) - so if you choose to try it for thinning paint that's something you'll have to evaluate for yourself. I'd be careful in any case.

For cleaning the airbrush, however, yeah, I do that all the time when I use Mr. Color. As a precaution I usually run a cup of Mr. Color Thinner through the brush before going back to painting, to reduce the amount of "hot" lacquer thinner that goes onto the model.

For changing colors, I usually just run a few cups of thinner through the brush, unless it's a color transition that has a serious effect on the new color. (For instance, if going from red to white, even a small amount of the red will turn the white into pink) In those cases, I clean the airbrush more thoroughly, which goes something like this:

- Run one or two cups full of thinner through the brush

- Disassemble the brush to remove the needle and the nozzle assembly.

- Clean the needle with a soft cloth soaked in thinner

- Clean the nozzle by pushing thinner through it with a pipette. Collect the thinner in the color cup.

- Clean the interior of the airbrush with an airbrush-cleaning brush soaked in thinner

- Clean the neck of the siphon cup with another airbrush-cleaning brush, using the thinner in the cup.

- Fill the rest of the cup with thinner, reassemble the airbrush, and spray out the thinner.

- Wipe the inside of the cup to remove any sitting paint

- Possibly spray out one more color-cup worth of thinner.

[Myersjessee]

I concur..I use the cheap stuff to clean the airbrush, the "real" stuff for mixing paints.

[Valkyrie]

Just curious, does anyone have any experience airbrushing with Mr. Surfacer 500 or 1000 (the stuff in bottles)? How well does it work?

I've been using Alclad primer on the VF-0S kit, but I'm almost out, and it's kinda expensive. So I've been eyeing the Mr Surfacer bottles thinking they'll be next in line when the Alclad runs out. I've got some Mr. Color thinner, so I'm thinking that'd be best for thinning it down.

So anyway, any experience my fellow models could share will be much apreciated

[Mervin]

I use the bottled mr surfacer 1000 on my airbrush and it works great. I thin it at 60:40 (primer:thinner) and sometimes at 50:50.