Making your own acrylic paints from scratch?

[CaptainHawk1]

I was thiinking... what is acrylic paint besides waterbased acrylic and pigments?

Is it possible to make your own paint using pigmets (powdered, liquid, food coloring, etc.) and mixing it with Future or am I being far too simplistic?

-Shawn

[macfrank]

I was thiinking... what is acrylic paint besides waterbased acrylic and pigments?

Is it possible to make your own paint using pigmets (powdered, liquid, food coloring, etc.) and mixing it with Future or am I being far too simplistic?

-Shawn :smoke:

The basic idea is sound, but in practice the problem is going to be pigment size.

I tried making an acrylic metal paint by mixing Future and Alclad aluminum buffing powder... which is so fine it almost acts like a liquid. I was able to spray it nicely, but while the resulting color when dry had a metallic sheen, I could see a very fine mottling and sparkle caused by the aluminum powder.
It might look good on a custom car model, but not on much else.

Mixing food coloring and Future works great if you want a transparent color, but it's not very good if you want a nice opaque color.

The best solution is probably to get a cheap acrylic paint (like Apple Barrel or similar) and extend it with Future. You'll get a glossy self leveling paint that is fairly opaque.

It may even work with artist acrylic paints (in a tube) but I don't know if the pigment size is small enough.

Frank

[Lt. Z0mBe]

Future and Apple Barrel work great.

Details with experiment photos here:

http://www.starshipmodeler.net/cgi-bin/ ... hp?t=48729
http://www.starshipmodeler.net/cgi-bin/ ... hp?t=37020

Hope this helps.

Kenny

[CaptainHawk1]

Future and Apple Barrel work great.

Details with experiment photos here:

http://www.starshipmodeler.net/cgi-bin/ ... hp?t=48729
http://www.starshipmodeler.net/cgi-bin/ ... hp?t=37020

Hope this helps.

Kenny

Actually Kenny... look closely at the first thread... I posted in that one.

Actually I've been using Dolphin Gray by Apple Barrel for years, I just never thinned it with Future before, but I was going to start anyway.

-Shawn

[Lt. Z0mBe]

Future and Apple Barrel work great.

Details with experiment photos here:

http://www.starshipmodeler.net/cgi-bin/ ... hp?t=48729
http://www.starshipmodeler.net/cgi-bin/ ... hp?t=37020

Hope this helps.

Kenny

Actually Kenny... look closely at the first thread... I posted in that one.

Actually I've been using Dolphin Gray by Apple Barrel for years, I just never thinned it with Future before, but I was going to start anyway.

-Shawn

Haha! Yes,...I was ummm...testing you to see if you are using the board's resources. Yes...testing you. You have passed and worthy of SSM to be sure.

Yeah, that's it...testing.

D'oh!

Kenny