Thinning Paint for Long Term Use

[Southsider]

Hello all,

Not your typical "how much should I thin my paint?" question.

A few decades ago when I was a youngster and built models I always hand painted with a brush. I remember always being jealous of the kids who could afford an airbrush because their models always looked better than mine. Well, I'm picking up the hobby again and am building my first model in probably 25 years.

I bought an airbrush and I am really getting the hang of it I believe. I've been using the Tamiya arcylics and I am pretty satisfied. I would like to transfer the paint to more user friendly bottles like the Faskolor type bottles my RC Lexan paint comes in. They make it pretty easy to squirt a few drops of paint out and use just what you need. I realize I could just use an eye dropper with the Tamiya bottles, but I'm looking for less cleanup (cleaning that dropper will get annoying imo). My plan is to buy the empty plastic bottles and just dump my Tamiya paints into their new homes. Easy enough. But then I thought "What if I thin them too, then I can just thin them once and they're ready to shoot whenever I need them?" One nice side benefit to this would be I could empty the bottle into a new plastic bottle, then put some thinner into the old bottle to swish around and dump into the new, thus not losing to much of my paint in the transfer (assuming the storing can be done of course).

I seem to remember reading somewhere that thinning the paints and not using them right away, the thinner will break down the paint over time. However, I've watched some videos and it looks like some people do this practice I'm thinking about. Also, some paints come "pre-thinned" or so I'm told (Faskolor). So if those are sold thinned then I presume they don't break down over time so my idea will work.

Wall of text I know, but I wanted to be thorough in my explanation for the experts here.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Edited February 8, 2012 by Southsider

[Mike Kucaba]

Sometimes, Pre thinning paint is a disaster. I don't know about Tamiya,or any of the acrylics. If you do go this route,I suggest Tamiya's thinner only.