Thinning car paint?

[Guest]

Hi,

This is not strictly modelling but I would like to use my Badger airbrush to touch up a couple of annoying stone chips on the side of my car before applying clear coat over the top.

Question is how do I thin down the "touch up stick" paint so I can run it through the airbrush? Would the touch up paint stick be cellulose based?

I know some of you guys use car primers and paints for model builds so hope you can help.

Atb, Colin.

[ojays]

Check out the instructions on the touch up stick, it should tell you what you need to clean up! (water/cellulose/acetone) etc..

Whatever you need to clean up, can be used as a thinner! But be careful!

The aerosols most of us use on our models are acrylic based, but touch up sticks can vary manufacturer to manufacturer.

Stone chips if small enough can be touched in using a very fine pointed brush, building the level up a coat at a time. Touch in and let dry, then repeat until the level is high enough and top off with the clear-coat.

However if the colour is a metallic basecoat you may loose the a little of the reflection/sparkle, but not necessarily a problem if the chip is small enough!

You may not get an exact match with aerosol/touch up stick as the manufacturers only supply the basic colour to match the manufacturers colour code. Car manufacturers actually have variants to the basic colour because of batch runs over a period of time.

These are only possible to match with the appropriate colour code/variant information book/micro fische detailing what the tint may be. (example: Fiat have a metallic blue that has 11 different variants that are only slightly different until applied to the vehicle, then they look like totally different colours)

This is why you often see vehicles with a panel/panels that appears to be a slightly different colour, in actual fact the colour may be correct per code number, but the tint variant is wrong!

Hope this helps.

Gregg

[Guest]

Thanks Gregg, I'll take a look on the touch up stick for cleaning info.

I'm sure it's solvent based as it smells potent and drys very hard and glossy, It's actually a BMW paint for the MINI.

Atb,