acrylic paint questions

[tbill]

I have read a ton of articles on this paint, but either can't find the answer i'm looking for, or have over looked it, so forgive me if it has been covered already.

the question is this, what primer is suitable for use under acrylic paint?

[niteowl7710]

Are you talking Lacquer Acrylics like the Tamiya Spray line, or just acrylic paint run through an airbrush be it Tamiya X-Paints or Testors Acryl line?

If it's just acrylic paint, the you can paint it over anything you want to, the problem comes when you paint OVER it. Acrylic should always be the last color painted as it can and will interact with enamels and particularly lacquers (automotive paint, Testor's MM Lacquers, Testor's Lacquer One Coat, etc).

It's always best (if possible) to stick within a line of paint, and especially a formulation of paint (enamel, lacquer, acrylic) to keep from ruining you paint job by having the paint have a nasty chemical fight at the masking line.

[tbill]

thanks for the reply. it's actually the testors acrylic paint and I want to run it thru an air brush. as I have read a ton of stuff on how paints of different composition don't play well together I wanted to make sure of what I needed under the acrylic.

[Art Anderson]

I've used Modelmaster Acryl paints directly on bare plastic with my airbrush, and they work perfectly for me. Of course, being water-borne, the surface needs to be clean, and free of fingerprints, but a simply washing with soap and water takes care of that. I've had similar very good results with Tamiya's Acrylic paints as well.

I think a lot of confusion stems from modelers learning to airbrush the old Polly 'S' paints, which were little more than a thinned out latex paint (chemically the same stuff as the latex paint one uses on interior walls, even on the outside of the house). That stuff would tend to "bead up" on even the cleanest of styrene surfaces, which required (for me at least) the use of a "primer", such as automotive acrylic lacquer primer, or better yet, Tamiya's lacquer primers. The flat finish of a primer allows this kind of water based acrylic paint to "wet" the surface, so that the paint doesn't just "bead up".

Art