Airbrushing Acrylics, Part 2- Xtracrylix
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Finally! I was able to spray some paint. While I was unable to acquire
a water trap/regulator I did find time to actually accomplish some spraying.
First up - Xtracyrlix.
The Paint
I decided to use a piece of sheet plastic for this test. Originally
I was hoping to have a model ready for spraying, but be that as it may,
I sprayed on a single sheet of sheet plastic. Naturally I did my prep
on the plastic before spraying (see my series Introduction).
Using the pipette I drew 18ml of paint, followed by 6ml of thinner.
For this test I only used Xtracyrlix thinner, because I found on my Olimp
Curtiss P-1A build, the Xtracrylix brand thinner works best in terms
of strength. 18ml of paint with 6ml of thinner is exactly one-fourth thinner
to two-thirds paint. As you can see on the test plastic, it sprayed extremely
well. No runs, and only a little splatter when I held the nozzle of the
Iwata Eclipse HP-CS too close to the plastic.
The Xtracrylix thinner label states you can go half-and-half with paint
and thinner. I tried this, and found the one-third ratio to work the best
for me personally.
When the paint dried, I adhered a piece of "straight" masking
tape (without removing any of the adhesion), burnished it down a little
with my thumbnail, then pulled the tape up. No paint came up with the
tape on the first pull, and only a very small piece (less than 1mm small)
on the second pull. Excellent. If the paint behaves this well with "straight-off-the-roll"
masking tape, then there should be no problem with masking tape with some
of the adhesion removed. Using Tamiya tape should also be no problem at
all.
Conclusion
I really, really like Xtracrylix. It's very durable out of the bottle,
especially when coupled with the Xtracrylix thinner. Yes, I did have luck
using windshield washer fluid as a thinning agent (see the P-1A build
article) but it lacked the strength found with using the Xtracrylix brand
thinner. My only regret is that Xtracrylix isn't as readily available
here in the USofA as it is in other parts of the world. Time to mail order
a number more!
Conclusion
My thanks to Roll Models for
providing the thinner. When I was looking for a paint to use for the P-1A,
I asked Roll about Xtracyrlix, and they were kind enough to send the paints
for the P-1A, as well as the thinner. I would also like to thank Hannants
for the paint used in this test (Hannants is the creator of Xtracrylix).
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