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Using Tamiya TS-13 gloss as a primer...


Gaston

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I've recently discovered that this Tamiya product makes a terrific primer, particularly on kits with many puttied areas.

 

It shrinks into details (no pigments to carry) yet fills and seals porous areas (with polishing or a second coat) in a visible and predictable way... Regular primer will fill details after a few reapeated sandings, or even simply with a single thick coat, and on top of that it is porous itself: I would not use that again on aircrafts, particularly to check the blending-in of canopies, where mask removal revealed the weakening effect of the primer on the paint... Paint that is kept away from the plastic by a weak layer is weaker, since friable regular primer is a structurally weak barrier to the bonding, which is not the case of a TS-13 lacquer gloss coat...

 

This for me is a huge advance in the appearance of my several putty-intensive kits, and it is useful for most airplane kits I would think... I got the idea from an article by a builder who went by the nickname "Dr Asher", for his 1/48th scratchbuilt B-32...

 

On vehicles the flat surfaces are not so great for gloss, as it tends to run or poodle on these: I would not necessarily use that on a tank for instance...

 

Also note TS-13 does not crinkle or attack opaque plastic (unlike the other colored lacquer sprays by Tamiya), but occasionally does frost clear plastic: Not quite a substitute for Future in that case...

 

The only difficulty is getting, with the spray can, an even, fully wet coat without getting runs, but you can sometimes sop off the runs with minimal trouble if they happen...

 

Remember, if you fear it is too thick as you spray on the model, that it shrinks to an incredible extent after fully curing, at least on the first coat: The runs are a bigger trouble than putting too much of this gloss on the first coat (puttied areas might need a second coat if they are not polished)... The panel lines sometimes disappear upon spraying when you spray enough to avoid the "orange peel" effect: The trick is to keep moving to avoid runs, and not worry about swamped detail: It will come back later with a vengeance...

 

Note that flat surfaces like the wings must be kept at a very slightly diving angle, so that the clear does not poodle thicker on the trailing edges but at the leading edges, where the curvature will nullify the "poodling" effect...

 

Another thing is to spray at night, as with this gloss you will notice the night air is much cleaner because the sunlight is not lifting the dust into the air by heating up surfaces... This gloss does sand very well when fully cured, so don't worry about trapped particles, but keep the impurities to a minimum, as sanding will clog the detail quickly if you do it on a large surface at once...

 

Gaston

 

P.S. Future itself is not as suitable for that purpose, as it doesn't shrink as much, and is not anywhere near as tough or sandable, since it tends to peel on sanding.

Edited by Gaston
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As I understand your description, the advantages barely outweigh the difficulties of using the product. If, as you say, avoiding pooling is tough using the spray can, perhaps decanting it from the can and airbrushing it might provide a better, more contolable result,

 

I've found that the Tamiya Fine white primer, or Armory white primer work very well if you like spray can primers. They're a synthetic acrylic lacquer (as I understand it) that dries very quickly and also dries baby powder smooth. They require no further "polishing" for smoothness, unless you're doing a high gloss car body.

 

Also, while I understand your liking a clear primer due to no pigments to add to the thickness, it doesn't help you see the seam work any easier. One of the reasons for a gray, white, or silver primer is to provide a monochrome finish that allows you to better judge the filling and sanding that's been done. I know the few times I've used Future as a primer to seal everything in preparation for Alclad I've missed some problems. If you use blue, green, or red putties you might also have some color bleed through a clear primer into your final color coat that is eliminated by using a colored primer.

 

I'm glad to hear that the Tamiya clear coat can be used as a primer, but personally don't see a big advantage for how I build. Cheers!

 

GIL :smiley16:

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Thanks for pointing out who "Dr Asher" is mquan!

 

As far as using Future as a sealer, Future does not really bond or seep into the porousity of the underlying layer, and will shrink unevenly depending on the surface: It can't compare to TS-13 at all... I would never use it for coating anything other than dipping canopies.

 

It could be that decanting and airbrushing TS-13 will allow better control: If that works without changing its properties, it would make using it even better. I have a feeling the properties might be altered by the decanting, which I have noticed in other products before...

 

There are people out there who do not (like me) use an airbrush, and who (like me) never will... I do use a spray gun, but other than that it's rattle cans (which typically have finer atomization than my spray gun!) or brush...

 

As far as seeing the seams, the TS-13 clear gloss show flaws much better than primer if you shine light across it: It is thanks to my originally gloss coating of clear parts with it (which does occasionally work without frosting them, but which I would no longer do given that I now know about Future) that I found out the air is 1000X cleaner of dust particles atfter nightfall: The amount of visible trapped dust is reduced from thousands of dust points sticking to the surface to near zero not long after the sun goes down, because the sun's ray heat up surfaces and lift dust from them. For this reason alone I never do any kind of painting in direct sunlight, and I even avoid spraying in my windowless basement ever, as the air near an open upstairs window is much cleaner as soon as the night falls. Very cloudy rainy days are the only times I would ever consider spraying during daylight hours...

 

Tamiya's fine primer is still porous and will absorp the paint of a metallic finish, particularly thin metallic paint, which is not what you want.

 

The issue with primer is that on many of my builds, the amount of corrective work, and the size of the puttied surfaces, is such that by the time all flaws are corrected there is simply way to much primer, resulting in the destruction of details: This is why "Dr Asher" came up with a gloss primer for his 1/48th B-32, a model that is scratchbuilt using mostly 1/72 B-36 and 1/48th B-24 parts (!): If he had used primer there would be an eight of an inch of the stuff on it by the time he was done, and no way to get a good bare metal finish: He never would have succeeded with primer, I am quite sure of it...

 

I have found that even on my uncorrected, but poor fitting, Monogram B-26 (deceptively sound of shape, minus a few errors, but unfortunately with an unfixable assymetrically "canted" left wing leading edge, which unredeemably killed it for me), by the time I was ready for paint the model it felt "soft" from all the Tamiya fine primer on it: It was essentially ruined before any paint ever even got near it, although the left leading edge issue made the whole problem rather moot...

 

It was sadly not to be the last: My corrected front end on my GW P-61 ended up ruined the exact same way, and you can see the effect of the weak adhesion of primer on the window edges when unmasking the canopies on smash moulded clear parts (masked with bare metal foil quite carefully, never mind the removeable glue residue from bare-metal foil): You can see the uneven two-layered breaks caused by the weakened adhesion of the interfering white layer of primer:

 

P6135104_zpse4d3b1fb.jpg

 

You can see how the paint flakes off the primer: There is primer on the back side of the flakes, but the weakness of the primer causes it to separate from itself: This would never have happened with gloss...

 

On the top the window the unmasking breaks came off quite a bit cleaner, but the "edge" of primer is still visible, which is yet another one of the primer's huge disadvantages: Clear gloss would be invisible under the overlying paint on unmasked edges...:

 

P6135105_zps4e923417.jpg

 

As far as well-fitting kits go, you can get away with thin layers of primer, but even with those I find the advantages of TS-13 gloss to be so great I fail to see any advantage to using regular primer. For Armor with flat surfaces and metallic parts, that is quite another story...

 

Gaston

 

PS. I also do not use gloss under decals, as floating them on a poodle of Solvaset or Microsol, over matte paint, seems superior to me in every respect, especially for adhesion and silvering. The only trouble is that it is unforgiving since there is limited time for moving them around, a fairly serious issue... So my aircrafts are glossed under the paint but not over it...

Edited by Gaston
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