Old Revell Paint

[Guest]

Hello I bought like a sealed never before opened 1991 Revell enamel paint it looks good and paints good but does anyone know if like the colors still remains the same if you compare it to a new one from 2018 and is that old paint bad to use or?

[Guest]

Do you intend to use the old and new paints side-by-side? If so, you can do a quick test: paint a bit of plastic card or some large(ish) leftover part of a model with the old paint and the new paint next to each other (touching, so there’s no bare plastic between them).

If you don’t intend to use the two paints side-by-side, then you don’t really have anything to worry about: they’ll at the very least look similar enough that nobody is going to notice that the shade is slightly darker/greyer/bluer/whatever on one model than on the other.

[Guest]

Do you intend to use the old and new paints side-by-side? If so, you can do a quick test: paint a bit of plastic card or some large(ish) leftover part of a model with the old paint and the new paint next to each other (touching, so there’s no bare plastic between them).

If you don’t intend to use the two paints side-by-side, then you don’t really have anything to worry about: they’ll at the very least look similar enough that nobody is going to notice that the shade is slightly darker/greyer/bluer/whatever on one model than on the other.

Thanks yeah I was worrying that the paint quality may be worse or something

[Tim Marlow]

I have humbrol enamels from the 1970s that are still useable, so I see no reason why this Revell tin (which will be similar in formulation) should deteriorate Levi.
Tim

[Guest]

I have humbrol enamels from the 1970s that are still useable

Same — see this recent post of mine.

Thanks yeah I was worrying that the paint quality may be worse or something

If anything, it may be better. Humbrol’s certainly is, anyway — and as I recall, up to the 1980s, Revell sold Humbrol paint in Revell tins.

[Tim Marlow]

Agreed about older being better Jakko....most of the chemicals in them have probably been banned now :cold-sweat:
I always found flesh colour the exception though, lasted a couple of years tops...then the pigment went solid..on the other hand, the .authenticolour formulation is amongst the best brush paint I’ve ever used. Great for drybrushing, far better than acrylics....

[Guest]

That’s why I bought a whole bunch of old tins some years ago when I came across them at a model show. Unopened tins of Humbrol (and, I suppose, Revell) paints will last pretty much forever, and even if they have been opened, as long as they’re sealed well you can almost always get them “working” again if you stir them until your arms ache long enough.

[Tim Marlow]

Funnily enough, I never bother stirring them in the tin. I have always picked up some solid pigment off the bottom of the tin to a pallet, and then added thinners or some clear phase from the tin until the constituency was right for brushing....I really don’t use them much now, last real use was metallics, still think metalcote are superb...but I now use Darkstar acrylics, which dry much faster and have a greater number of shades....

[Guest]

That sounds almost like François Verlinden’s way of drybrushing: get a lump of the pigment from the tin and apply some to your brush, then wipe most of it off (this from some or another early volume of The Verlinden Way, but I can’t be bothered to find my copies and tell you which one it was j. Anyway, I always stir Humbrol and Revell paints in the tin, but usually consider the older ones to be stirred well enough long before all of the lump of pigment has disappeared. Even that can take more than one song on the radio, though.

Mostly, though, I paint with acrylics that require no more than a bit of shaking and perhaps a few seconds of stirring with a ice lolly stick to be well-mixed.