Novice enamel paint advice.

[michael432000]

Hi everyone.

I would like to ask some of you experienced model makers about painting with enamel paint..

I first have to confess that I am not a modeller but a cyclist who has several older classic carbon Italian bikes and over the past couple years have been doing paint touch ups to small areas, chips and scrapes. Some of the work has been very intricate where a scrape has damaged a decal and the surrounding different colour paint or there is a piece of artwork with several different colours.

I have been using Revell enamel paints and Tamiya fine and finishing compound and yellow masking tape, 2000 and 2500 grit sandpaper and cheap Skipton fine detail paint brush set.

I’ve improved a lot having learnt from my mistakes but some things are still very annoying and I can go backwards and forwards over the same area for days or even weeks at a time.

I find painting a lager area say 1cm square impossible to apply paint evenly out of the tin so I end up with high and low spots.

Just as I wet sand it down to almost perfect, just a tad more and dam, a little spot appears with the different colour base paint showing through.

After painstakingly sanding down, the edge of the new paint often gets a shiny edge where it blends with the surroundings.

Would you use Tamiya fine and finish or just finish? Do you rub hard or gently? I’ve noticed a fair bit of paint on the cloth. Should I wait longer than 24 hours for paint to cure?

Any tips would be appreciated as this can be very time consuming and frustrating.

Apologise for the long post and thank you for your patience.

[Tim Marlow]

Hi Michael. Welcome to the forum….you never know, we might just get you building models as well…..
To your questions though…..
For larger areas the uneven paint issue you are getting is related paint drying before it levels out. I would dilute your paint a little more and use more than one coat to get a better finish.
Not all paint is ready to go straight out of the tin. Mix the paint very well. Take out a little into a small container, like a clean milk bottle top. Add a couple of drops of thinner and mix well until the paint flows properly. You should then be able to paint the area leaving far fewer brush marks. Leave the enamel at least 24 hours between coats or it will pull up when the second coat is put on. Re coat until you are happy with the colour depth then leave at least 48 hours before using the rubbing compounds. Just because paint is touch dry it isn’t necessarily hardened.
I would then use fine followed by finish, using a different cloth for each. You shouldn’t need to rub too hard, you are only evening out the surface. You will get paint on the cloth, this is akin to using T cut on a car body. This procedure should give the paint a good glow like old style cellulose.
If you want finer sanding papers, by the way, look up Albion Alloys, they go right up to glass finish stuff.

[michael432000]

Hi Tim.

Thank you so much for your reply. When I first started out I had some frustrating experiences trying to mix paints together with contamination and failure to reproduce the exact same shade for further applications in the same area so as a novice I decided to give up meddling too much and for that reason decided to use straight from the tin. Of course now that you’ve pointed it out, thinning and building up coats is the obvious way to go.

I have considered model making and I do love the painting when it turns out really nice but I’m a bit of a perfectionist and I can find it very frustrating and quite stressful too sometimes. Requires so much patience.

Thank you once again for those useful tips; just what I needed. Model makers are an interesting bunch.

[Tim Marlow]

Model makers are an interesting bunch.

Well that’s one way to describe us….barking mad is another LOL….