Acrylic Vs Enamel?

[beetleman]

I was wondering what is the difference between the two types. Or to be more specific, what are the advantages of acrylic, as it has given me nothing but a world of pain lol. The only way I seem to tame it is by airbrushing it, and even then it builds up fat and won't cure for ages. By brush it just laughs at me and does whatever it wants regardless the surface texture.

[Jonny Retro]

I stopped using Humbrol enamel paints about 10 years ago - the stink of the paints & the white spirit for brush cleaning was just giving me too many crippling headaches, even with using candles as a catalyst to burn the stink off to slightly less whiffy parafin ...

The big advantage for me then is that Tamiya acrylics are ostensibly water based ... apart from the (I'm guessing by smell here) Isopropanol & Meths (wood alcohol), I can't remember much organic chemistry from my brief brush with it over 20 years ago, but AFAIK IPA & meths, although they are fairly long chain molecules, are nowhere near as big and hairly as white spirit, so they're less of a problem for me.

It's not all good though. some plastics seem to shun the paint, even after cleaning it first ... it also has the habit of levelling out excessively (filling details but leaving inadequate coverage), needs thinning unless it's a brand new jar ... and the glosses tend to dry far too quickly, leaving a sticky mess if you leave overbrushing more than 30 seconds - which can be lessened by thinning, but that worsens the levelling out. I know people talk about using some sort of retarder, but the cure time without it is excessive - 24 hours to handle the matts & satins (or as Tamiya like to call them "Semi-gloss" ... I can't use the word "semi" without chortling ... "semi" - fnurk!), more like a week for the glosses. It also seems to need 3 coats of most colours.

I've experimented with priming bits first with plastic primer ... the benefits are marginal tbh - you can get away with one less coat of the acrylic tend, but you a similar amount of detail anyway, thanks to the primer ...

Advantages to acrylics then ... well, once you've used the paint up, you can wash/scrape/scrub the pots & lids up, the pots are then ideal for storing ...

... more tamiya acrylic paint. I use mine for mixing & storing various "custom" colours - such as "Wild Willy Wellie Yellow", "NOS bottle blue", "Morris Maroon Leather" and "Naughty Pigs Pink"

Humbrol acrylics are worse than Tamiya IMO - all the drawback of the tamiya paints, but worse ... and the colour matching is much poorer. Although I do rate Humbrol #113, "Rust" very highly.

[MadInventor]

I've only used tamiya brand acrylics, and then only for matt colours for painting tanks. I put about 75% thinner in and have found that it dries very quickly. The big minus for me is that when painting camo I always get a lot of overspray around the edge of the pattern. I've tried lower pressures, thinner paint, holding the brush closer, nothing seems to work. I found humbrol enamels a lot easier to get a good clean camo line with. (I don't mind the stink). I've also noticed that tamiya acrylics seem fairly immune to stripping by brake fluid, whereas enamels come off easily.