Air Brush Paint to Thinner Ratios - Weathering


Greg@mnrr

Section Hand
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Just checking to see what other model railroaders are doing to thin their air brush paints when doing a "fading" of a model rail car. What do you use for thinner and at what ratio of paint to thinner?

I been using a 20% paint to a 80% thinner, either alcohol or commercial thinner.

Thanks.

Greg SOO hopper.jpg
 
This is all over the map for me. It depends on the paint and the airbrush being used. I have used everything from 10% paint 90% thinner to 50-50 which is basically weathering with full strength paint. If the paint is already formulated for spraying I will usually use it full strength and just apply very light coats. If I want to fade the paint I like to use a very fine mist coat of white. For weathering and fine detail I use a gravity feed airbrush with a fine (.35 mm or smaller) needle/nozzle setup. This gives me a tremendous amount of control over how much paint goes where.

Thinners: None if the paint is formulated for spraying. Xylene for anything solvent based. I have found alcohol only works well for Tamiya paints. It can speed the drying process on other acrylics which is already fast enough for me! Ammonia free Windex thins well, as does distilled water.
 
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Got to agree with Alan here. It all depends on paint type, airbrush being used, and what I need to do. I've used 95% thinner in one brush, but had to cut it down to 75% in another brush. It all depends on the tools and what you want to do.
 
for fades, i use 30% paint, 70% glass cleaner (or thereabout). for actuall weathering (rust background, grime accents etc.) i use about 50/50 acrylic and glass cleaner. I always use glass cleaner though. For some reason i never have much luck mixing alcohol and paint, and well, the glass cleaner is a lot cheaper than thinner.
 
I use the cheap acrylic craft paint ($0.94 a bottle.... unlimited colors!) and 91% rubbing alchohol with a 20/80 mix. Covers well, sprays thin, dry's fast, cheap, and drys flat like the real thing with a good "tooth" to hold weathering powders. easy clean up and I just coat with Testors dullcoat (best thing ever!) to protect the paint and eliminate scratching. I know some will think this is sacreligious (for not using model paint) but it comes out really good. Good enough to have one model published ina mag.
I love how it leaves all the details on the model...... never could achieve that with the $5 a bottle model paint.
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I use acrylics of any kind(either hobby paints or cheap craft paints) thinned with windshield washer antifreeze. I usually thin 50% and spray a test card. I can then tell if it needs more thinning or not. Each paint is different and I find his to be the most reliable way to thin the paint.
 



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