John,

There are plenty of alternative paints but if you have got used to and are familiar with Tamiya then why not stick with them?

Colin

John

International Paints do a fantastic range of enamel paints which I have found to be far better than Humbrol

Paul

HI John

Ashley's idea of Dulux is not as barmy as it sounds, buy white and a set of color tubes, them mix your own small quantities in the color you need.

Paul's idea of International paint is superb, again buy the white and tubes of color. they make specific yacht paint.

Another place would be HMG. in Manchester, they make paint and you could specify it for coach painting.

Mark

This is the issue. i was not really seriously suggesting that one would buy a dozen different coloured litre tins of Dulux, however if I needed a drop of white paint or black I would not hesitate to reach for the Dulux tin to paint some smaller things.

For hulls, it is great stuff, thick and very tough. Assuming you want a gloss finish. It will never replace the little tins of course, but should not be overlooked for some uses.

Ashley

John
There are acrylics…………and then there are acrylics………….and then…….
For example, Tamiya acrylics are water-based but Halford's rattle cans, which are described as acrylic, are quite definitely solvent-based.
You're OK with an oil-based top coat (like enamel) over an acrylic base coat, but avoid using any solvent-based top coats over any other type of base, or you run the risk of the solvent attacking the base coat. If in any doubt, stick to the same type of paint throughout.
Dave M

Due to the smell and fumes given off by the likes of Humbrol enamels I have turned to water based acrylics for hand painting. Having done a bit of research on the various plastic modelling sites such as International Scale Modellers I now use the Vallejo Model Color range. This range has been developed for brush painting and the range of colours are huge.

Cheers

Dave

I completely agree with Dave_P and Charles Oates that the Vallejo Model Color range is very good indeed for brush application, if one is looking for water based acrylics. The range tends to be a bit skewed towards the needs of the armour and generally 20th century military modelling community, with umpteen shades of olive drab available, but one still finds just about everything that one needs for ship modelling purposes, too.

The range also includes some quite good metallic paints; not least their brass and copper paints are very good.

Vallejo paints have the further advantage of being widely distributed, and are often available in shops catering to the plastic modellers, and of course also in many, many online modelling shops.

Please note, though, that there are two main model paint ranges from Vallejo: the Model Color, primarily intended for brush application, and Model Air, with finer ground pigments and more heavilly diluted to suit airbrush painting. Although with appropriate measures either can be used with both application methods, I have found that it pays off to respect the division, which means that one needs to make sure to get the right one when buying (at a quick glance bottles and labels for the two ranges look quite similar).

As concerns mixing one's own colours from any range of paints, I always do this by weight rather than volume; that way, it is quite simple to replicate a certain mix at any time with sufficient precision to match the previous batch well enough. With a set of precision scales like for example these **LINK** paint can be weighed to the nearest 0.1 or even 0.01 grams. In my experience, for the quantities of paint involved in modelling, the 0.1 grams degree of precision is ususally more than good enough.

/Mattias

Edited By Banjoman on 05/01/2015 09:12:04

John,

For my part I'd say that yes, indeed: using Vallejo Model Color (or any other water based acrylic) on top of a solvent based primer should work without any problems, as the water and medium in the acrylic paint is not likely to be a strong enough to come even near to dissolving or biting into the primer, and the solvent in the primer will have evaporated when the primer dried.

Nevertheless, I would like to cite the goldpainted rule of painting: always try out any unknown combination of surface material, primer, paint and/or varnish that you plan to use on a piece of scrap material before you apply it to your model! If the test does not turn up any issues, all you've lost are a few hours or days waiting for the paint to dry; if it does, it didn't happen on your model!

For detail sanding I tend to use either my smallest needle files (bought from Eskader in Stockholm — **LINK** — they are a bit expensive, but at a total length of 100 mm much smaller than standard needle files) or else a home made sanding block or stick made up from a piece of suitable abrasive paper glued to a suitable piece of wood. By suitable I mean of the required grade for the paper and of a proper size and shape for the piece of wood (which can be anything from a largish chunk of 10 mm plywood to a sliver of 0.5×1.0 mm stripwood).

/Mattias

Edited By Banjoman on 05/01/2015 14:00:03