Monday, 28 October 2013

A good discovery

I've just matted down the T-26 and for this I used Winsor and Newton acrylic matt varnish from their Galeria range. Now I've been using distilled water to thin the stuff and getting mixed results such as it drying patchy or getting 'spiders legs' when I sometimes get too close to the model or just a general dissatisfaction with spraying water-based stuff in general.
Anyway I decided to to thin it with IPA (Isopropyl alcohol-the 70% stuff) this time to see what happens, fully expecting the IPA to turn the varnish into jelly (which can happen with some acrylics) BUT it mixed very well and after testing on a scrap model the varnish dried evenly and most important of all very matt.
After all the issues I've had with matt varnish frosting over the past year I'm glad to say I seem to have finally cured the problem.
I did try the gloss varnish from the same range and although it dried VERY shiny it was'nt touch dry for some time so for now I'll stick with Tamiya X-22.
The ONLY downside to the Galeria varnish is that it is'nt very durable and does'nt take handling very well but that's a price I'll pay for a decent matt finish plus latex gloves help a lot when handling a model anyway.

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