TOPIC:

Hi all, today I had a go at painting the nitrous tank on my wild willy 2, I brushed on xf-23 light blue, it looked dreadful, so disappointing I couldn't bare to show you all! Full of nasty brush marks.
I quickly scrubbed off the paint and had a rethink, my brother has a air brush which neither one of us has tried this type of painting with, I've never used it at all. I primed the tank then painted it with the airbrush, see the photo for the results.
Firstly, a few facts:
-I'm not sure whether I set the airbrush up correctly.
-the paint went on very, very thinly.
-I did not thin the paint at all.
Now the question. I was expecting a nice glossy finish but as you can see it's very flat, did I do something wrong or should I expect to need to lacquer for a gloss finish?
As always any help is much appreciated. Lee

I've just realised, xf is supposed to be flat isn't it? Tamiya advise you paint the nitrous bottle in this flat light blue according to the original ww1 manual (I'm trying to make my ww2 in the ww1 colour scheme)
I've noticed most box art ww1's I've seen have a gloss nitrous bottle, maybe that's not correct to the build manual?

yep XF is flat
otherwise it looks pretty good, you can thin the tamiya paints with distilled water (think 50/50 should look a bit like milk) spraying thin is a good way to get more layers.

Thanks waterbok, looks as though I've clumsily managed to get this right! I'll play around with the airbrush more now I've got a little more confidence with it and thanks for the thinning tip:)

Well, here's the finished result. The paint went on extremely thinly and took a lot of passes to get a good cover, I figured the lighter the coats the less chance of the paint running under the masking tape.
The finish isn't what I was expecting at all, I expected the tank to be glossy but tamiya did recommend the flat colour as stated above.
With acrylics should I be applying a clear coat or would this be the finished result?

I always clear because I like the protection and the shiny regardless of the manual, so its up to you

I can't fault your evenness of finish or your edges ... but really, it's supposed to be that colour? I think someone at Tamiya was having an off day - to me, NOS bottles should always be shiny mid-blue, on the Willy's I've done (+ multiple driver sprues) I've always done them with a mix of 2 parts X-4 Blue + 1 part X-2 White ... I guess I've been wrong a lot

I'm with you Jonny, it does look bizarre, I'm wondering if hospital nitrous bottles were that colour in the 80's when wild willy was produced, It's a very hospital-ish colour.
Here are a couple of photos of the rear wheel arches, I can see why people stop short of painting right up to the body, it made masking it a pain and it's obviously not perfect.
I'm not sure whether to mask it again tomorrow and give it another flash over with olive drab to get it right, or am I being too picky?

The Dday addiction.... Be carefull guys It begin with a wild Willy and finish with a real Willys and the uniform...
very nice body

Lee, I think that's about as good as you're going to get the rear arches by masking with tape, if you do it again it may come out worse, and freehand brings it's own problems ... I'd be inclined to leave it alone