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Thursday 1 May 2014

Production Delays

My painting project has slowed down a little due to problems with the paint. I normally use Humbrol gloss enamel paints, which for the last 50 years or so have proved most consistent and reliable, but lately there have been some issues. This is particulalry the case with gloss enamel red (19) and black (21). With these two, no matter how much stirring I do I find that the paint remains tacky for days, sometimes a week. Some other gloss colours appear very thin, and the ratio of oil (if thats the right term) to pigment is too great so the effect is a very watery, runny paint that requires several coats to achieve good coverage. Being so thin it is difficult to paint accurately too without the paint running into all the little crevices.

I initially thought this might be a one off problem, so I ditched the paints I had and bought some more from other outlets, but same issue has occured. I am now looking for other sources of these colours as I have given up on Humbrol.

Anyone else experienced this - or is it me?

2 comments:

  1. Hi Bob, within the last year or two Humbrol have brought the production of their enamel range back to the UK from China, and with that they have reformulated the paint to the original standards. This was partly due to economic reasons and, I believe, quality. I have used their gloss range for years to paint traditional style toy soldiers, and had noticed how thin the consistency had become. I recently bought some of their matt colours directly from their website, hoping I would get some of the latest batches, which I believe are now manufactured for them by Rustins, a long established family firm. I did receive the new paints and I have to say they were the nice thickly pigmented paints of old, which dried ultra matt without any problems. I have yet to try their newer gloss range so cannot comment but I would urge you to give this avenue a go, otherwise give the Revell range from Germany a try. I used to use these colours when I could not get Humbrol and found them to be just as good. The colours are only slightly different to Humbrol and indeed there might even be a couple of different colours. They smell different, but are readily intermixable and give a good hard finish in about the same time as you are used to. Hope this will help. P.S. as you probably know, Hornby now own Humbrol, and they are particularly good at listening to modellers, hence the return to the old standards.

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  2. Michael has summed it up nicely, there are still a lot of the Chinese paints about but I think the new UK ones are very noticeably better. As a last resort the satin paints cover well, but of course then you are in to varnishing.

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