Today, I stripped the lettering off of my N Scale Arnold SW1, and since I could not remove the glass, I decided to simply do a little bit of touch up. I pulled out a bottle of Tru Color flat black, and it was nothing but sludge. Oily black, same, Daylight Orange, ugh...nothing but sludge, and I tried to thin it again...no luck. I then grabbed a bottle of Model Masters Mango Orange, and it was too thin for anything but spraying. I am sick and tired of having 20-30 year old Floquil that is in perfect shape, and new paint that is worthless.
I hadn't thought about it bremner, but you are absolutely right -- my paint box is the same as yours. I culled my ruined paints perhaps six months ago and as I look into the box tonight, what mostly remains are bottles with metallic-colored caps with the Floquil feather logo. Interesting!
I may be a minority view here, but solvent paints for me were more for weathering (flow better). With the limitations of where I've lived, I've been more a fan of water based, like Badger/ModelFlex.
I also am a big fan of Floquil. I used to do a lot of custom painting and really liked Floquil. There was an excellent choice of colors and never had a bad experience with it. I stopped taking side jobs and have all of my locomotives painted and heven't had to crank up the old air brush until recently and not being up to date with the new paints that are on the market, I am at a bit of a loss at what to do with today's paints.
Aaaaaah, the smell of Floquil "BN Green". Brings back memories of my youth, I can almost smell it now!
Several years ago I messed around with airbrushing 'Model Master Acryl' Acrylic Paint and had pretty good results with it. My memory is now hazy, but I think I thinned it with isopropyl alcohol and water, and shot it at about 15 PSI. One tip I picked up is to mix the batch in a clear small cup and to then swirl it a bit and see how it sticks to the sides. In a clear cup it's easy to see how thick it is. It should be like milk.
I've never had a chance to get any Floquil or Pollyscale before they were discontinued, but they seem to be almost worshipped now. I don't have much of a problem with Model Master; I like acrylic more than the enamels. My airbrush has a washer in it that will corrode from the solvents, so I airbrush acrylic, but have a few others for hand painting.
The original formula Floquil was the best model RR paint ever. When they reformulated it in the eighties, it was still good but not as good as the original. Scalecoat was OK too. There was another short-lived brand back in the sixties, Evreka, that was excellent too. Model Master is actually pretty good. Thinned correctly, it works very well for air brushing. I have a bottle of Floquil PC green I bought in 1968 (That's 49 years ago for those of you in Rio Linda ) and it's still perfect. Doug
I have not used Floquil, but use lots of model enamels (Humbrol/Railmatch). I've tried using acrylics (Humbrol/Railmatch/Badger/Tru-Color) but they always gum up my airbrush and find them too thin for brush painting.
I used it for 25 years from the time I started air-brushing until its demise in 2013. I still have about 16 bottles of various colors. Of course, when a bottle bites the dust, that's it. Also used Pollyscale to varying degress of success. I am having good luck w/ Badger and TruColor in the air-brush. No problem there. What I REALLY miss about Floquil are things where I prefer to "brush" on like rail. As mentioned above, Badger and other air-brush ready paints are not friendly to a conventional brush I've found. So, I am resigned to the fact I am going to have to get off my backsides and find a Testors, Model Master or some other paint and then match the colors. I've seen the color-match cross references on line. Floquil was not only a very good quality paint, it was also very versatile.
I had to repaint a Stewart F-3 because the colot Stewart used was off, probably a little too much brown in it. Years back I did quite a lot of custom painting and was at a bit of a loss as to where to find the correct colors for the Lowey paint scheme for the northern Pacific North Coast Limited. After a lot of looking I stumbled across Tru-Color, but with all of the colors they had, probably missed the greens I needed. Sent them an email inquiring about the colors I needed and in a very short time I got a response saying that they did have the colors. I did order them and am quite happy with the results. This first photo is of the F-3 masked off ready for paint. The next photo is of the shell after painting and the last photo is of the F-3 to the left, after decals were applied, with an Atheran Genisis behind it and a Walthers North Coast Limited coach. I think the colors are right on. The Tru-Color paint is easy to use also. Now comes the job of installing the handrails, grab irons and other small details.
