stang_crazy
Member
So i see they make the paint in enamel and acrylic. Which would be better to use?
Also what type of primer should be used under them?
thanks Mike
Also what type of primer should be used under them?
thanks Mike
Floquil paint question
- Thread starter stang_crazy
- Start date
Bigford, why on earth would you use Zippo lighter fluid as a paint thinner? It's mostly naptha with paraffin and other petroleum products. In addition to being much more expensive per ounce than normal paint thinner or mineral spirits, the naptha will do a fine job of destroying the seals in your air brush while the paraffin will clog your air brush nozzles over time with a wax buildup that will be difficult to remove. You've also found the only product other than straight gasoline that's more of a fire and explosive hazard than paint thinner. This is a really irresponsible thing to do and, even worse, to suggest it to someone you don't know. I hope you're pulling our leg on this.
Mike, I have no idea how long Bigford has been painting but I've been doing it for more than 40 years. Acrylic paints are water based and enamel paints are solvent based. Water based paints will thin and clean up with water and a little windex. Enamels require paint thinner or mineral spirits fro both thinner and clean up.
I try to use acrylic paints whenever possible because enamel paints have significant health and safety risks if they are not used in a well-ventilated area. Contrary to the advice given by Bigford, you need a coat of primer regardless of the type of paint you're using if you want a professional looking paint job. The only difference is you need acrylic safe primer for acrylic paint and a solvent based primer for enamels. Floquil sells both kinds. I've thinned acrylics with success using 9 parts distilled water to one part windex. Almost all acrylic paint will cover as well and give you as good a job as enamels but there are still some colors that are not produced in acrylics or they just don't look good in acrylic paint. Some examples are metallic colors, like bright silver or gold, and some specialized colors, like aged concrete. If you're going to be spraying specific colors, I can give you specific advice. As a broad answer, I'd always try acrylics first and use enamels only if the color or finish isn't available in acrylic. Don't get hung up on Floquil either. You can go to a crafts store like Michaels and find entire aisles devoted to acrylic craft paint. Print out the Floquil color samples from their web site and take it with you. You'll find many colors that are an exact or very close to an exact match to Polly S or Polly Scale paint. The difference is you can get 3 ounces for as low as 69 cents compared to a heck of a lot more for Floquil acylics in one ounce bottles. Americana has been a consitently good brand for me but the others are about the same. I'll repeat - always spray a coat of primer before you spray color. You'll have much better loking paint jobs if you do.
Mike, I have no idea how long Bigford has been painting but I've been doing it for more than 40 years. Acrylic paints are water based and enamel paints are solvent based. Water based paints will thin and clean up with water and a little windex. Enamels require paint thinner or mineral spirits fro both thinner and clean up.
I try to use acrylic paints whenever possible because enamel paints have significant health and safety risks if they are not used in a well-ventilated area. Contrary to the advice given by Bigford, you need a coat of primer regardless of the type of paint you're using if you want a professional looking paint job. The only difference is you need acrylic safe primer for acrylic paint and a solvent based primer for enamels. Floquil sells both kinds. I've thinned acrylics with success using 9 parts distilled water to one part windex. Almost all acrylic paint will cover as well and give you as good a job as enamels but there are still some colors that are not produced in acrylics or they just don't look good in acrylic paint. Some examples are metallic colors, like bright silver or gold, and some specialized colors, like aged concrete. If you're going to be spraying specific colors, I can give you specific advice. As a broad answer, I'd always try acrylics first and use enamels only if the color or finish isn't available in acrylic. Don't get hung up on Floquil either. You can go to a crafts store like Michaels and find entire aisles devoted to acrylic craft paint. Print out the Floquil color samples from their web site and take it with you. You'll find many colors that are an exact or very close to an exact match to Polly S or Polly Scale paint. The difference is you can get 3 ounces for as low as 69 cents compared to a heck of a lot more for Floquil acylics in one ounce bottles. Americana has been a consitently good brand for me but the others are about the same. I'll repeat - always spray a coat of primer before you spray color. You'll have much better loking paint jobs if you do.
Last edited by a moderator:
bigford
loco junkie
hey jim
i was painting one day and i knocked over my last bottle of testors thinner
while i still had paint in my airbrush. I was like oh S!@# and there was my
bottle of zippo juice and on the backside of the bottle is said "also usefull
for removing tar gum and paint". So i was lets try it sure as all get out
it worked!!!
I only use it in a pinch, driving 40 miles round trip for a $5.00 bottle of thinner is
a waste of time money and fuel
i was painting one day and i knocked over my last bottle of testors thinner
while i still had paint in my airbrush. I was like oh S!@# and there was my
bottle of zippo juice and on the backside of the bottle is said "also usefull
for removing tar gum and paint". So i was lets try it sure as all get out
it worked!!!
I only use it in a pinch, driving 40 miles round trip for a $5.00 bottle of thinner is
a waste of time money and fuel
stang_crazy
Member
lighter fluid for thinner wow, yeah cant say ive heard that before either.
stang_crazy
Member
thanks for the responce jim,
i always use primer, just wasnt sure if there was a certain kind to use with floquil paint. Ive dont lots of painting as i used to build model cars alot got about 300 of those down stairs. But i havent touched em for about a year. Maybe once the airbrush gets here thatll change.
the reason i asked about the diffrence is because floquil offers up armour yellow, harbor mist grey and UP light orange in enamel, but only offers armour yellow, up dark gray & harbor mist grey in acrylic.
So ill have to oend up ordering online a place i know sales the 1oz bottles for $3.50
which is the cheapest ive seen it. Id gladly do the idea you mentioned with their color chart but the nearst hobby store with a good selection of paint is 2 hours away & I rarely get there. Unelss you can tell me colors that are pretty close to those i listed above.But im sure once im ready to try out the AB ill have some questions on mixing so i know i get it right. I have no issues with a well ventelated area as im in the basement & ill be building a booth with a fan that vents out the window via dryer hose.
Thanks mike
stang_crazy
Member
Yeah ive also used flat white lots of times as a base coat also.
Bigford, the next time you're at a big box home improvement store, buy some lacquer thinner in one quart cans. It's exactly the same stuff Floquil sells for solvent paint thinner in those little bottles and it will only cost about $10. That will save your from ever having to use Zippo lighter fluid again.
AndrewC
Mostly Harmless
Jim, a quality lighter fluid works great in air brushes. An architectural modeller pointed me in that direction about 30 years ago. Its about the best stuff out there for thinning enamels. The cheap stuff contains paraffin as you say but the better stuff doesn't. The consistency you get with the thinned paint beats the hell out of the usual thinners.
My brush is over 25 and I've been spraying enamels with lighter fluid as a thinner with no damage to the brush or fittings. I also have a 50 year old Coleman stove that uses naptha fuel (white gas). The rubber seals on that are still in original condition.
The reason it works so well is it evapourates very quickly meaning the paint drys quicker with less chance of running. I tend to mix and spray very small amounts at a time. 10ml of paint to 4ml of fluid. In that amount its no more explosive than the blast of propane and/or butane that comes out of every aerosol can.
Andrew, I can see that a straight naptha product without paraffin or other petroleum products would work as an enamel thinner. Coleman stoves use white gas, which is straight naptha, so I guess that would work too. However, the rubber seals in Coleman stoves are designed to stand up to naptha. I don't know if airbrush seals are designed the same way but it sounds like they must be if yours has held up for so long. Zippo lighter fluid contains paraffin and other petroleum distillates to lower the flash point of the fuel, which is fine for lighters, but I can't imagine it would be a good thing in an air brush.
Bigford, I don't know what you mean by a "hotter" mix. Lacquer thinner is lacquer thinner. As far as I can tell, from using it over the years, there's no difference between the lacquer thinner in the blue and orange quart cans and what Floquil sells as thinner, except price.
Bigford, I don't know what you mean by a "hotter" mix. Lacquer thinner is lacquer thinner. As far as I can tell, from using it over the years, there's no difference between the lacquer thinner in the blue and orange quart cans and what Floquil sells as thinner, except price.
Bigford, the next time you're at a big box home improvement store, buy some lacquer thinner in one quart cans. It's exactly the same stuff Floquil sells for solvent paint thinner in those little bottles and it will only cost about $10. That will save your from ever having to use Zippo lighter fluid again.
Haven't bought it in a while have you Jim? I paid around $17.00 for my last gallon, 'course that's up here in the frozen north! Lacquer thinner is even more volatile than Zippo fuel too! It's the most volatile of the solvents we use. You can use Xylene or Xylol, which is not so flammable and thins Floquil and Scalecoat I or II equally well. I use Xylene to thin and lacquer thinner to soak brass and clean up, You need GOOD gloves for this stuff, and very good ventilation, lest you orbit your house!
Alan, I'm paying about $10 a quart so $17 a gallon is a good price. Where can you buy Xylene or Xylol? I haven't seen it for sale in any of the usual Home Depot kinds of places. I agree about the volatility issue. There are very significant long-term health hazards if you use enough of any of these XXT products without really good ventilation. I know some may scoff at taking precautions like having a paint booth and wearing a repsirator if you're more than a casual painter, but the effects are insidious and often don't show up until 20 to 30 years after exposure. How serious depends on your genotypes. If you have genotypes that are susceptible to the effects of these volatile chemicals, including benzine, you develop the worst form of luekemia, that's invariably fatal within 1-2 years after diagnosis. My late wife drank well water that was contaminated with tiny amounts of benzine and Xylene, as I found out after her death. She did so for almost 25 years and that was enough to give her acute myelogenous leukemia. She was dead almost exactly 2 years after diagnosis, which is about the outside limits of survival. There is no safe level of exposure to many of these volatile chemicals we use every day in modeling, so not taking proper precautions can have dire efffects down the road.
Cjcrescent
Master Mechanic
Jim;
Both Xylol/Xylene as well as Tuolol/Tuolene are available at my local Home Depot. Both Floquil's old Dio-sol and Scalecoat's Thinner are a mixture of these two solvents. The only thing I use Lacquer Thinner for is to strip brass for painting.
CJ, I've had no problems using lacquer thinner for thinning Flouquil, Testors, or Model Master paint. Maybe I've been lucky? I'll have to ask the guy in the paint department about the X-T products. I'm used to California still, where all that stuff was either stashed behind a counter or not sold at all because of the problems we had with huffers. Once the word got out you could get a better high using one of the X-T products than spray paint, the sales went way up, along with wide-mouth Mason jars. You know as well as I do about the effects of that stuff on your body. At least with spray paint, the huffers would usually pass out and start getting some O2 before they went into respiratory arrest. Once they started huffing the straight stuff, we had them dying left and right. No narcan, no nothing, just immediate death. Amazing what some people will do to escape their bodies.
I'll have to ask the guy in the paint department about the X-T products. I'm used to California still, where all that stuff was either stashed behind a counter or not sold at all because of the problems we had with huffers. Once the word got out you could get a better high using one of the X-T products than spray paint, the sales went way up, along with wide-mouth Mason jars. You know as well as I do about the effects of that stuff on your body. At least with spray paint, the huffers would usually pass out and start getting some O2 before they went into respiratory arrest. Once they started huffing the straight stuff, we had them dying left and right. No narcan, no nothing, just immediate death. Amazing what some people will do to escape their bodies.
Dave, sorry to hear about the lymphoma but I hope you're doing well now. As the old saying goes, once burned, twice shy. I suppose some people get tired of me harping about the dangers of solvent paint but, having a wife who died from Leukemia, I'm a lot more aware of what happens when your stem cells stop working right and the hell you and your family go through.
I suppose some people get tired of me harping about the dangers of solvent paint but, having a wife who died from Leukemia, I'm a lot more aware of what happens when your stem cells stop working right and the hell you and your family go through.