Model Fleet

Especially if you like to use rattle-cans - and especially if, like me, you've been limited to Testors rattlecans for years - you know that, for each warship build, the search for the "perfect gray" is a major pursuit.

Only recently have I discovered a whole raft of new flat-finish grays - some of them Testors colors I'd never seen before, but many of them also new Tamiya spraypaints - virtually doubling the palette of grays available in this form:

Here I've tried to arrange (and number) them in order of decreasing brightness - lower reflectivity - although the appearance is subjective, due to color-sensitivity of the viewer's eye, the camera taking the picture(s) and the lighting conditions at the time. The front row are all called "gray", of one variant or another - however note some of them appear just as bluish or greenish as the three behind, explicitly called "blue" or "green" - per the following:

1: Testors Camouflage Gray (1933)
2: Testors Flat Gull Gray (1930)
3: Testors Flat Dark Aircraft Gray (1226)
4: Tamiya Light Blue (Luftwaffe) (AS-5)
5: Tamiya Light Gray (IJN) (AS-2)
6: Tamiya Light Ghost Gray (AS-26)
7: Tamiya Gray Green (IJN) (AS-29)
8: Testors Light Sea Gray (1926)
9: Tamiya Dark Ghost Gray (AS-25)
10: Tamiya Medium Sea Gray (RAF) (AS-11)
11: Tamiya Neutral Gray (USAAF) (AS-7)
12: Testors Navy Aggressor Gray (1994)
13: Testors Intermediate Blue (1920)
14: Testors Euro I Gray (1988)
15: Testors Gunship Gray (1923)
16: Testors Panzer Gray (1950)

The advent of these lighter- and bluish grays, in particular, are very welcome - and this is far from the entire selection, at least in terms of the Tamiya (blue-) grays.

The Tamiyas are impervious to mineral spirits - typical paint thinners - which will dissolve (especially fresh) Testors paints, enabling a wide range of Testors-over-Tamiya wash effects. Both types are highly soluble (though the two can't be mixed, AFAIK) in lacquer thinner.

Such Tamiya and Testors paints have different strengths and capabilities: the former goes on very fine and thin, and dries very quickly, while the latter both sticks (at least, under masking tape) and can fill surface defects much better. The very near- if not identical color-matches between some of them, open up possibilities for using both types on different parts of the same build, where advantageous.

Meanwhile, the combination of strongly-adhering Testors and finer-coating Tamiya, should make for ideal latex-chipping of the latter, over a base coat of the former.

All in all, a great expansion of the "tool set"!

Cheers,

-Matty

Stay away from Testors ModelMaster:

* Flat Light Gull Grey
* Dark Sea Blue

Not a single can I've had has ever not had problems. Doesn't matter where you store it or when you use it.

"Gull" is the same FS as US Navy Cold War Tactical Paint Scheme. So if you're doing a 60's or 70's jet, you're gonna be asked for this color. The "Blue" is the same FS as your late war/50's Navy jets and prop jobs.

Cheers,

Don

...Completely agree with the Dark Sea Blue - I've never had it go on right.

One thing that I've had mixed success with - but when this works, it works GREAT - are acrylic craft paints such as those sold at Walmart, Michaels, Hobby Lobby, etc. The range of colors is remarkable, the price (between .45 and $1) is hard to beat for something that will last you several kits, and they clean up with water. Where I've run into problems is in mixing them for brushing/airbrushing - I'm thinking that these things tend not to age well, and after a certain point there's just not much you can do with them. Like I said though, when they work, they are spectacular - I did a 1/144 WV-2 WarningStar in them some years ago, and the quality was equal to anything you could get from Testor's at literally ten times the price. Please let me note that isn't a bash at Testors, they put out a good product at a reasonable price. But when you build on a budget, ya gotta look for alternatives.

Mike

You guys must've gotten into bad batches of those cans - which you can have trouble getting out of - if, like me you keep getting your Testors paints from the same LHS (and they bought a bunch of dogs, all from the same, bad run). I've seen problems with the spray nozzles and valves/seals on the cans themselves, in addition to with the paint, per se. I almost always see problems with one or both of the former, once the cans get really (many months or years) old.

On the other hand, I've gotten just about every Testors spray color to perform well, at one time or another. Mike, I've gotten very good results with Testors Dark Sea Blue, several times now - the most recent of which you can judge for yourself: on my my PB4Y-2 Privateer chop job. Likewise, I got an essentially perfect finish from Dark Sea Blue rattlecans on a Blue Angels SkyHawk, for many years the pride of my desktop. When finally its paint did develop a problem, it was the Testors GlossCote (or whatever it was called) that started first to yellow, then to crack. You may be seeing this model soon, as I'm thinking of refurbishing it - this time without the Testors gloss coat, of course.

Two Testors colors I've found more problematic than the others are also two of the lightest: Flat Camouflage Gray and Flat White. Both go on very thick, are especially prone to clogging the nozzles and often suffer what I would call "micro-tarballing" - where, instead of fine droplets the can throws tiny, sticky globs, which don't lay down into a smooth finish but instead build up into something resembling a layer of gravel over everything. The effect is particularly heavy (i.e., obnoxious) on delicate PE, which ends up looking like it's covered with rime ice - or shotcrete. (A good effect - if that's what you're looking for!

)

I'm thinking the above problem must have something to do with their white/lightest pigments, interacting with the flat finish - which could explain the rotten experience with your Flat Light Gull Gray, Donny. I don't remember ever using that particular color - but I have gotten decent results with their "regular" Flat Gull Gray. In fact, its far better performance than from my Camouflage Gray rattlecans was a major reason I switched my Boxer build from the latter to this color. Anyway, I just bought two more cans of it - knock wood...

Cheers,

-Matty

and a lot of the guys at my local club have suggested that, but this has been going on for several years since 1998. I also thought that maybe humidity had something to do with it. So I deliberately stored my rattle cans inside the house. No success.

As to the blue, do you notice that it has a HEAVY petroleum smell to it? Weird...

Cheers,

Don

Donny, I have noticed that heavy smell - and also for Testors' gloss (dark) brown, gloss neutral gray and gloss black, as well. Always a gloss color - and usually a pretty dark one, as well. Dark pigments are often heavy particles - like iron- and cobalt oxides, for example - so I'll bet this heavy-smelling petrochemical helps keep them in suspension.

Of course, I'm talking completely out of my a** now

, and have no idea why they smell like kerosene - but they do!

Cheers,

-Matty

It smells almost like you'll blow the place up if there's even a spark. Now of course, having said ALL of that - I have not had a single problem with any of the Tamiya spray cans. Whether flat or gloss. Weird.

Cheers,

Don

At least, certainly not too flammable - I absolutely know this, as I've been lighting- and smoking cigars (and before that, cigarettes) in the same, tiny workroom with those paints for over 10 years now! (Every naval modeller, IMHO should - just like real Navy chiefs - never be without a big, stinky cigar.

)

What that Testors Heavy Crude smell does for internal cancer, though, is still an open question (whose answer I am afraid to hear, but think I can guess.) Thank God for these big, fat cigars - undoubtedly my salvation, either by: 1) miraculously somehow countering the effects of one cancer, with another - or 2) killing me first, thus avoiding the entire problem!

Cheers,

-Matty

Sadly...resin dust will kill us both long before food/drink/cig smoke...

That stuff's potent.

Cheers,

Don