This is just a quick and basic run through of how i use the old square bottled testors enamels that so many of us have laying around the hobby rooms.
This is the guinea pig kit, i bought a few of these kits when they were on sale just for the 409 engines. so the body and hood will become the donor for this tutorial.
The first thing i do is pop the parts in the sink and give them a quick wash with some warm water and dish soap. rinse thuroughly and either allow to air dry or be like me and throw them in the dehydrator for 20 minutes.
I see a lot of people that say this step is not necessary...
even in many current kits, it mentions in the instructions that you should wash parts prior to working with them. While many do not use the release agents from many years ago, there is still the possibility of any type of contaminate to be on the styrene. Why risk the possibility of ruining a paint job just because you got lazy and skipped this step?
The other basic prep work i do before i even think about painting is to address any bodywork flaws that will show up in the final finish. check the kit carefully for flash, mold lines, ejection pin marks, sprue removal divots. and sort out the visible ones before your primer coat.
Another thing i occasionally do on kits that have prominent badging is to apply some bare metal foil before the primer and paint coats.
This kit has decent badging on it so i will demonstrate just so you have an idea of the process.
using a small piece of bare metal foil and place it over the quarter panel scripts, i use a q tip and tooth pick to burnish it down so it conforms to all the lettering. Then using an sharp xacto blade i trim the foil as close as i can to the lettering, it does not have to be perfect but the closer it is , the better the effect looks when it is done.... in all reality I could have trimmed the below example closer to the lettering but for this demonstration it will be close enough to see why it is useful.
My primer of choice is stynylrez, this is for a couple different reasons. First one would be that because it is acrylic ( water based ) when fully cured, it is resistant to most solvents used in enamels and lacquers. What does that mean to you?...Have you seen the posts where people post up pics of paint jobs gone wrong, where the color coats react with the primer coat and cause lifting because the thinner in the paint is hotter than the carrier in the primer. That cant happen if the primer is acrylic.
Off to the paint booth, i tend to build up my primer in mist coats, it helps it adhere better and ensures i don't apply it too heavily. Stynylrez i normally shoot directly as it comes out of the bottle, personally i have never had to thin it to make it work for me but i know others that cant get it to flow properly for one reason or another. if you need to thin it, aim for 2% milk consistency using whatever acrylic thinner you are comfortable with ( nothing with isopropyl alcohol in it as it will gel the acrylic ) I grab my Iwata Neo airbrush with the stock .35 needle in it and set my compressor to between 18-20psi.
When i start spraying the primer, my goal is very fine coats. it should take between 3 and 5 mist coats, with about a 5 minute flash time in between coats, to give full coverage. I find that building up the primer this way allows it to adhere far better than if i were to just basically blast it with one heavy coat and let it go. This body took 3 coats to get full coverage.
Once I have full coverage, I set the body into the dehydrator for a couple hours to fully cure. if you don't have a dehydrator then you would want to let it sit at least overnight before moving to the next steps.
While the primer is drying, its time to pick the color. I do not have many of the ole Testors enamels as i have switched to mainly acrylics for the last couple years but i do have a couple still kicking around. I decide on the green enamel but I think its a bit too dark for my liking so I will lighten it up with the white.
I do not normally use the Jars that come with bottom feed airbrushes but for this demo i am also trying out a new addition to my airbrush collection ( cheap Chinese knock off ) I purchased to mainly use with 2k clearcoats, might as well see if works properly.
First i dump the contents of the green bottle in the airbrush jar
Then i fill the enamel bottle with the same amount of thinner ( in the UK it is called cellulose thinner, it is just cheap lacquer thinner ) as it had paint
I then did the same with the white. This gave me a bit lighter green color that was roughly 50% paint vs 50% thinner.
I threw the cap on the jar and while I could have shaken it up by hand I did the lazy thing and used my vortex mixer to blend everything together and get it ready to spray.
By now the body is out of the dehydrator. Before I head to the booth again I grab a fine grit sanding stick and lightly sanded the primer off just the highest points of the scripts I previously covered with the bare metal foil before priming.
Once the foil shows through, I use a soft brush to remove any sanding dust before heading back to the booth.
Remember the cheap ass airbrush i mentioned....
Here is where you see a difference between the cheap knockoffs and airbrush brands that sink time and effort into research and development. the angle of the bottle puts things at an odd angle and it is not very comfortable to hang onto. It will still serve a purpose, but, I guarantee if one of the big names made one of these it would be more comfortable and better thought out.
Like most of my painting adventures, when shooting enamels i am a many mist coats type of guy. overall I run a rotation of between 5 and 7 minutes between coats over the course of an hour to build up the depth of color. This is coat 1. As you can see the first coat is no where near full coverage, i lay down the same types of coats for the next hour.
By the time I am at coat number 4 I have pretty uniform coverage.
I go with 2 more slightly heavier mist coats followed by one "wet" coat. Still at the 5-7 minute intervals to allow the lower coats to flash. The last coat I lay down is considered a wet coat. I use the reflection from the lights to follow along using about a 20% overlap and make sure I get nice even coverage as I shoot the entire body.
I then set the body in the dehydrator overnight to cure the enamel ( if air drying you want to see this aside for 1-2 weeks before playing with it at a risk of adding finger prints to the finish )
The next morning this is what i have. There are a few specks in the paint work but i will polish those out before i clear it. Overall it really does not need clear over the top but i tend to paint everything as a basecoat/clearcoat system. You could just as easily just use a polishing kit on this and a decent wax and be totally happy with the results.
That's how easy it is to get a decent finish out of Testors enamels. They are a fairly cheap alternative to some of the higher dollar paint brands out there atm.
Give it a shot and have fun.