Coloring Clear Parts

What I do is use Tamiya transparent acrylic paints - lightly airbrushed onto the inside of the clear part. I use a very thin mixture applied very lightly.

You can pratice on a clear vacformed package blister to get the aplication right before you spray the part.

Testor's Model Master and Humbrol make transparent paints as well.

For small items like light lenses, Kristal Klear tinted with food coloring.

Cheers,

u can purchase clear colours in Acrylic for most tints,red,blue, green,smoke etc the brand I use is tamiya, best of luck

Damien.

Depending on what color you need/want, just put some food coloring into Future and dip the parts. Just be careful as the food coloring is concentrated enough to make strong colors very easily; you'd be amazed at what one drop per ounce will do. And yes, in case you're wondering, it's a cheap, easy way to make clear colors for other uses.

I think that the cost factor here is peanuts compared to getting the results you want. The thing that I have found in airbrushing Tamiya transparent acrylics is they loose a significant amount of translucency in the process. This probably isn't a problem if you are covering a solid background but if you are doing something like tinting windows it is. Diluted Future when applied right with an airbrush adds virtually no opacity. As far as the tinting for Future I have always used a few drops of gloss acrylic paint that I have on hand and it works fine -- no need for food coloring. There are always so many variables that you need to do a test shot with what ever you use before you apply it to your model.

Jim Bright

Others have mentioned the Future+food-coloring route, which works well. But even *this* is not necessary, if you are doing very small areas, such as lights. On small parts, food-coloring+"your_favorite_white_glue" (I like Sobo brand) works wonders.

Check out:

You can also use RIT dye.

After all the replies, which are all good, the only thing that remains is your sense of economics, ie, $2 for a 1/2oz bottle of Tamiya transparent acrylic paint (one color), or $5 for a 32 oz bottle of Future/Krystal Klear (same same, clear acrylic) and maybe 85 cents for a box of food coloring (four colors to make whatever combination you can imagine). A little quick math in my head says for $6 you can then whip up 64 of those half ounce bottles.

Thanks gents! These clear parts are for the navigation/position lights for the EnterpriseNX01 the scott bakula star trek,alot of these are teeny tiny blips,others arepart of the ships structure.Guess polar lights couldnt dye them,I will go the transparent paint route,thanks mucho again!.

Could you expand on this? Using the RIT dye is a new approach/ idea that I have not seen before. Better describe what it is too for all the folks who may not know.

"Rich" wrote in news:4401f1ba$0$20160$ snipped-for-privacy@news.wanadoo.fr:

All I remember about Rit from making Rit dyed plaster of paris for dioramas years ago is that the water has to be HOT for the dye to properly dissolve.

Frank

I have had good luck using machinist layout dye. Dyechem I believe is the name of the stuff. It is available in blue, green and red. I use the green for windscreens on canopies. I scrouged mine from a machine shop. I filled small paint bottles with each color they had. Cost me a six pack of barley pop.

It still works once it has cooled. I had a jar for the longest time that I used for a base colour on the scenery on the layout. I just kept adding water to the mix. I never tried it on plastic so I can't say how it would have behaved.

Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.

Mad Modeller wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@nextline.com:

Hmm. Well it was 30 years ago. Maybe I wasn't using enough to color the plaster properly.

Frank

Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.

People keep using and mentioning "FUTURE".well its obviously a brand name for something.that isnt on my shopping ventures.so could somebody tell me what it is , what it is used for .and its chemical composition.so is it the universal .product ...........lol ?????

A very good, and frequent question. This seems to be the defacto bible on the subject, and it will change your life:

erm....... here in the UK its called Johnson's Klear

HTH ...Simon :-)