Dish Soap or Windex ??

Tayed-Gachi · Post by **Tayed-Gachi** » Thu Dec 15, 2005 12:09 am

I heard that to get some water based paints(such as polly Scale or testors)
to spray a little better through an airbrush you can add a drop or two of dish soap or windex.

Is this true???

Wass up wit dat??

Kylwell · Post by **Kylwell** » Thu Dec 15, 2005 12:30 am

I've heard rinse agents can help but soap? It'd reduce the surface tension but increase your foamability. I've tried the Windex thing and had it curdle my paint. Never again. Then again that was the old Tamiya formula and many yers ago. Things could have changed.

irishtrek · Post by **irishtrek** » Thu Dec 15, 2005 1:36 am

My nephew a couple weeks ago discovered that Tamya paints have liquid dish soap in them, he found this info on the internet.

Kylwell · Post by **Kylwell** » Thu Dec 15, 2005 10:10 am

And because it's on the internet it's gotta be true.

Lt. Z0mBe · Post by **Lt. Z0mBe** » Thu Dec 15, 2005 12:13 pm

I always thin my Testors acrylics, Delta Ceramcoat acrylics, and Pollyscale acrylics with Windex for airbrushing. Tamiya acrylics don't contain dish soap, they contain a surfactant, which is similar to rinse aid you put in dishwashers.

I hope this helps.

Kenny

irishtrek · Post by **irishtrek** » Thu Dec 15, 2005 6:24 pm

kylwell wrote:And because it's on the internet it's gotta be true.

I don't know if you're being sarcastic or what, but it may or may not be accurate info.

Kylwell · Post by **Kylwell** » Thu Dec 15, 2005 6:27 pm

There is no sarcastic (or sardonic) emoticon.

Yes, I was being sardonic.

Post by **TER-OR** » Thu Dec 15, 2005 9:40 pm

Dish soap is a surfactant but not all surfactants are dish soaps.

Dishwasher detergent is a non-foaming soap. A bit of dilute dish soap will not cause your paints to foam.

Liquitex makes a few nice products - Flo Aid is a good surfactant designed to help thin the thick hand-painting paints. Slo Dri is another surfactant designed to slow the drying process - both handy when painting miniatures.

However, I haven't found the need to add anything but the thinner of choice when airbrushing paints designed for the task - like Testors, Tamiya, PolyScale (same as Testors Acryl) or Gunze (same as Tamiya).

irishtrek · Post by **irishtrek** » Fri Dec 16, 2005 1:30 am

I have a correction to make,after talking to my nephew about it he told me that the dish soap is in the thnner not the paint,and the thinner also has rubbing alcohol in it. He went to post on here earlier but for some reason the post did not show up on the thread here.

fantacmet · Post by **fantacmet** » Fri Dec 16, 2005 7:46 pm

Ok lets try this reply thing again shall we?

Soap breaks the surface tension. This can be demonstrated by taking a straight pin and rubbing it on a candle then dropping it in a container of water,the pin will float on top because of surface tension. Drop a few drops of dish soap in and the pin will sink. I've had alot of problems with acrylic beading up on the surface of my models. This is a bad thing. Adding a couple of drops of dish soap to my thinned paint(I use my own thinner made with water and alcahol) and wow does it ever help. It levels it right out. Anyway thats the purpose of the soap is to help the acrylic paints to level out and to prevent it from beading, as I am sur eI'm not the only one who has had problems with this.

Michael