I'm thinking strongly about switching from Model master enamels to Tamiya acrylic paint for my armor.I thought I'd get some feedback first.

Hi.

For what it's worth, I use acrylics exclusively for all spraying. Tamiya & Gunze are my personal favourites too. They are easy to use, thin, spray, and clean. Windex sprayed through the airbrush will clean it out no problem as well.
The only critical thing to remember, I highly recommend you use Tamiya's X20A Thinner to thin their paints, alcohol is cheap, but it will produce a rough, "sand-paper-like" finish.

I hope this helps, and Cheers, Pat

It does help. I'm trying to take my armor to a new level and I think changing paints is part of that process.

Acrylics are good for base coats because the washes flow much easier with thinned down enamels. It's also way easier to clean up your paint tools using acrylics. The Tamiya paints aren't my fav. I would suggest Vallejo paints as they dry very uniform.

I will look for Vallejo, and give it a try as well.

Greg and Co:

I have heard great things about the Vallejo range, but I have a hard time working out which colors in their range match the WW2 colors I need?? Is there an online list somewhere that says that Panzer Gray is "X" in the Vallejo range, British SC15 is "X2" in the Vallejo range etc?? I would love to try out the Vallejo equivalents for the German, US and Russian colors for WW2 armor. Any help in identifying which colors match these in the Vallejo range would be most appreciated.

Is their any US mail order supplier that people can recommend as having the paints in stock most of the time (all of the time!)??

Best Regards,
George

Mike Starmer hopefully at the MAFVA Nationals in a couple of weeks) - Watch this space.

I may have an Acrylic variant of Mike Starmers UK Olive Drab paint mix SCC15 and I think it's: in parts 5:1 as listed
either:

Vallejo Model Colour
70.924 Russian Uniform Green (FS34201) : 70.950 Black
(also, add equal parts of Thinner for brush painting and further add 20-25% water for Spraying)

or:

Vallejo Model Air
71.044 Light Grey Green (FS34201) : 71.057 Black

Anyway, my Cromwell looks pretty good

Shermans vs Germans, the Big Cat killer Ants RULE M4!

You need the vallejo colour charts which give all the cross mixes with humbrol, tamiya, testors etc. Go to their website - it's an education believe me.

http://www.acrylicosvallejo.com/

Model Colour - brush
Model Air - airbrush

Also
Panzer Aces - first 2 sets for Armour, next 4 sets cover tanker figures from all countries (USA NWE/USMC PTO, UK/Comm NWE/NA, Germany NA/NWE/Winter, italy, Russia, Japan) total 48 colours

I'm a convert

Good luck

Shermans vs Germans, the Big Cat killer Ants RULE M4!

Click on the English flag and there's a ton of charts and techniques to look through.

LifeColor do two excellent sets of German colours, and a good set of Olive Drabs as well. They go on as well as Vallejo. I use both at all times. You'll definitely love the difference from smelly enamels to nice and safe acrylics.

If there's any colour you can't find an equivalent for, just ask on here.

I appreciate your response. The downside to changing paints is now I have a whole drawer full of obsolete paint. O well it must be done. I'll pick them up as I need them.

George - Vallejo paints are on EBay from a store in california. You get to choose 22 Vallejo Air or 22 Model air paints and they have every color I believe. Even with shipping they are a little cheaper than my local Hobbytown store.

Chris - I started with Model Master paints too, and now they serve as the enamel washes (you can even mix them for rust,grime, soot, oil, dust, dirt, etc). Track48 store has a great selection of MIG Pigments for $3 less then my local Hobbytown store.

Using the old enamels for a wash is a great idea.

Thought I would add my 2 cents,
I also like Tamiya acrylics for spraying and then the use of Vallejo acrylics for figures and details. Panzer Aces sets and individual bottles can also be purchased from Squadron Mail Order. I usually get Vallejo Model Colors from thewarstore.com since they ship fast and have good prices. Unfortunately, they do not carry the Panzer Ace sets...

Thanks for your thoughts, I'll probably try Vallejo and Tamiya sense everyone is saying good things about both. I sure appreciate everyones help with this subject.

Tamiya paints are great but they are dead flat. This makes them usable as a final finish but you have to gloss coat the heck out of them before decalling. Also, glosses are easier to apply washes to as flats seem to suck them up.
From my experience, Gunze is best to work with as they are semi-gloss but now the line seems to be very hard to get.
Garfield

I once tried mixing MIG faded Olive Drab pigment powder with Future so I could have a glossy, but faded colour base over which to apply decals. I used too much pigment powder to be able to say it was a success but I am going to try again and refine this technique.

Kinda, do-it-your-own paint. I'll give that a shot as well. Adding clear gloss to Tamiya flat paint results in a paint that isn't saturated enough and hence requires a lot of coats to cover. Adding your own pigment to a clear gloss could address this. Olive drab pigment is easy enough to mix up from primary colours.
G

It is true that gloss paint makes washes much better and easier, as I have to sand off with 1500 grit the unwanted regions that soaked in the wash. With gloss the wash goes where you want it more or less.

The trouble is that the best flat varnish that I know of, The pollyscale acrilic flat that most people rave about, is in my opinion barely adequate for a well maintained camo aircraft finnish that has not been waxed, and sometimes, if applied heavily, will look slightly waxed. This is not enough for armor that has been moving in the field during combat. Also under flattening by sanding the varnish flakes off. I' d rather have a flat paint for a tank. Gaston

There was a really impressive 35th Firefly in Military Modelling International June 2008  by Les Smith; it won a prize ad EuroMilitaire 2007. He uses enamels as a base colour, and lightly polished the paint with a soft cloth. It doesn't look realistic, it looks REAL. So I just ordered some enamel paint from White Ensign..... Yes, I might just actually finish a model!!

Tim

www.fighting48th.com