Thinning Touch up paint
Discussion
David,
For that job, ordinary cellulose thinners will do fine. The ratio depends on the viscosity of the paint out of the bottle, and the setup (needle size, air pressure) on your airbrush.
To check, spray a test pattern on some clean paper, and have a good look at it. If you can make out individual blobs of paint, however small, at the edge of the spray pattern, I'd suggest atomisation isn't fine enough, thin the paint down some more. For most airbrushes that aren't set up for spraying heavy acrylics, you probably want the consistency of milk - not completely watery, but not far off it.
Provided you dial the material down appropriately far, you can't really overthin the paint - you'll just end up with coats that apply progressively less paint (and therefore a job that requires more patience).
A final thought - while the above is true for every touch-up paint I've worked with yet, do check with a little decanted from the bottle before you add thinners to the main paint. It's not impossible that you might end up with a waterbased paint, which would curdle and separate if you add thinners to it. (and obviously, you'd need to thin that down with water, rather than solvent).
HTH
Tol
For that job, ordinary cellulose thinners will do fine. The ratio depends on the viscosity of the paint out of the bottle, and the setup (needle size, air pressure) on your airbrush.
To check, spray a test pattern on some clean paper, and have a good look at it. If you can make out individual blobs of paint, however small, at the edge of the spray pattern, I'd suggest atomisation isn't fine enough, thin the paint down some more. For most airbrushes that aren't set up for spraying heavy acrylics, you probably want the consistency of milk - not completely watery, but not far off it.
Provided you dial the material down appropriately far, you can't really overthin the paint - you'll just end up with coats that apply progressively less paint (and therefore a job that requires more patience).
A final thought - while the above is true for every touch-up paint I've worked with yet, do check with a little decanted from the bottle before you add thinners to the main paint. It's not impossible that you might end up with a waterbased paint, which would curdle and separate if you add thinners to it. (and obviously, you'd need to thin that down with water, rather than solvent).
HTH
Tol
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