Future Floor Wax and painting woes

The thinner is reacting with the future. Try using a wash made with a water based paint. I use tempera paints because they are cheap, available sometimes even at grocery stores, and work well. Other people here use acrylics with a few drops of dish soap and make what is called a "SLUDGE" wash. I used to use this but found that the soap sometimes reacted poorly with the final top coat, causing that beading your talking about.

They key is to use something that doesn't react with the future.

foo wrote:

That's pretty much what I thought, but everything I read on the net implies that future (being acrylic) wouldn't react with the solvents for oil paints.

Neil

Jeff Barr> The thinner is reacting with the future. Try using a wash made with

alcohol and thinners eat through future.

-snippage--

I kinda disagree here. (and yeah there are those who get good results with Future)

I believe the key is to not use future for a barrier coat, or for any gloss coat at all. If you're using enamels for paint, try using a clear acrylic coat to use a barrier coat before applying a wash outside that.

I use duracryl which is kinda acrylic-like, but has a VERY hot thinner. You can use Novus or Blue Magic to polish it if you like, and light enamel washes don't attack it. (in my experience anyhow)

Future, in my book, is for dipping canopies, gluing instrument photo-etch instrument panels together with, and so forth. I learned from the great one, Ted Holowchuk, not to use Future for gloss coats. (well, he kinda balled me out for messing the finish on a good model)

It does work on floors though!!

--- Stephen

You may need to airbrush the future on to get a thicker sealing coat. Spray it on straight without thinning.

Don't use Model Master thinner, try Turpenoid instead. Less aggressive and flows better

"Stephen Tontoni" wrote

?????

Future is a clear acrylic gloss coat so what are you trying to say??

Up to a point, that's true. But if you use a lot of thinner, or scrub the surface with a brush or towel, the solvent will attack and eat through the Future, attacking the paint underneath. It's still better than washing bare paint or paint with an oil-based clear coat. You can also use a water-based wash as others have described.

Curt

I swiped my kids art paints (water based) diluted it and tried that. Much better and obviously no damage to the undercoat.

Now my dilema is what to seal it with. It's really starting to look nice and I'd hate to trash it by spraying it with something that will cause the wash to run.

Neil

foo wrote:

Is turpenoid the same as commercial mineral spirits? I tried that as well on the underside of the other tail wing and got equally lousy results.

I gave up on the oil wash and used a water based instead. No problems now, but I'm not sure what to use to seal in the wash.

Neil

The Model Hobbit wrote:

Future is acrylic and it's usually clear, but the best way to get a gloss from it is by dipping, not by airbrushing. Like he said, his finish was supposed to be gloss, but was pebbly with the Future. You can't rub out Future and it's designed to be fragile so that you can remove it just by wiping another coat of it on your floors.

I'm just saying one will get more consistent results with a better product.

Some people have great results with Future, but I feel that there's a good deal of luck involved, and I've been bit too many times trying to use Future as a gloss coat.

--- Stephen

That's what folk say, though I haven't tried it myself.

But you used Testors Model Master for the wash. That's a solvent-based, not an oil-based paint. "Oil paints" are the oil paints sold in small tubes for artists, not the bottled enamel paints sold in model shops. And they should be thinned with an appropriate thinner, such as a turpenoid.

You might also have applied both the Future and the wash too soon. I'd wait a week before applying the Future, and another week before applying an oil wash over the Future, so that the enamel paint and the Future have time to cure completely.

If the wash was too dark, you probably didn't thin it enough. If done properly, you shouldn't need to wipe any off. It takes practice to get it right, so it's a good idea to practice on a cheap model that you don't care about, or on the back side of a model part.

I've seen graininess in Future when it's airbrushed at the wrong air pressure and/or distance, but never when it's brushed by hand. Did you try to thin it? Future doesn't need thinning. Are you sure the painted surface was completely smooth? Future is so much glossier than paint that it will reveal how irregular the paint really was. It's usually a good idea to wet-sand the surface lightly before each coat, with 1000 grit or better. (Look for it in shops that sell automotive painting supplies.) Is it possible that you just had a lot of dust in the air, or used a very dusty brush, and the dust stuck to the Future?

That's a problem with his airbrushing technique, not with Future.

"Serge D. Grun" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@news.free.fr...

There are a number of factors, that can be considered part of airbrushing technique, that can contribute to the bad result that was obtained. As was mentioned before, if the surface under the Future isn't smooth that roughness will be accentuated by the gloss finish. Also, the properties of Future itself, especially as it thickens a bit with age. In order to get a smooth gloss coat with any paint it has to completely level itself when applied and to get this you have to apply a "wet" coat. My own experience with Future is even a wet coat wouldn't level well -- at least until too much was applied and the result was a mess. Through some experimenting I found that thinning with 91% isopropyl improved things in a big way. It took less material to get a wet coat and it leveled very nicely. How much to thin? Depends on the condition of the Future. Mine is several years old and has probably thickened some even though it appeared to have the same consistency as always. I thinned mine about 50-50. In fact in one instance of a rough surface I sprayed straight alcohol -- the Future evidently went back into solution, leveled and then cured smooth. I always keep sheets of styrene handy and do test shots before I paint anything. A mix and a setting that gave me good results at a previous time may not under different temperature and humidity conditions. If I can't get a good test shot I quit for the day rather than botch up a model.

Jim Bright