It looks like I'm going to be using acrylic paint with my old air brush since I can't find air brush thinner or Diosol around here and I'm not going to Detroit to buy it . Can cheapo craft paints be diluted and used satisfactorily or to you need a premium paint such as Tamiya ?

T

All of my air brushing has been with the craft paints. I thin it with a little tap water and it works fine. The advanced craftsmen will probably say to use distilled water and the higher quality paints but for my needs the craft paint and tap water work just fine.

Tom

Thanks , Tom , guess I'll do a little 'sperimentin' ....... .

T

teejay Wrote:It looks like I'm going to be using acrylic paint with my old air brush since I can't find air brush thinner or Diosol around here and I'm not going to Detroit to buy it ....

What brand of paint were you trying to thin? Even the bastardised version of lacquer thinner which we're offered nowadays works as a thinner for Floquil, ScaleCoat, and Accupaint. It's readily available at Canadian Tire or any hardware store. It isn't, however, any longer useful as a cement for styrene. For that, I use MEK, which I buy direct from Sherwin-Williams.

I've not tried airbrushing craft paints, but I did use it to brush paint ties (Central Valley tie strips) and rail on the upper level of my layout. It seems okay on the ties, but isn't as durable on the rails as was PollyScale.
If you want distilled water, it's pretty cheap at the supermarket for a gallon, but you can get the equivalent for free if you have a dehumidifier. I used dish soap to clean the water collection bucket on my dehumidifier, then rinsed it well and collected a bucketful from dehumidifier operation, which was also dumped. The next bucket of dehumidifier water went into a gallon jug which previously contained store-bought distilled water. It performs exactly the same, both for paint thinning and decal work, and since the dehumidifier is normally running anyway, didn't cost me a penny.

Wayne

Floquil ....which I haven't seen for sale around here any more . I never considered lacquer thinner , thanks .

T

Make sure you use a strainer on your airbrush and you will be fine.

The chief advantage - allegedly - to modeling paints is that some companies produce lines of prototypical paint colors for aircraft, armor, trains, and so forth, but with a little practice and a simple, cheap color wheel you can do it yourself.