Stopped by my local hobby shop and noticed the paints had six of each color, a nice selection. They were all there last year too. So, I went to Home Depot and noticed they had hundreds of cans of white paint, and they mix the paint color to your specification right there. I wish our pigments would come in an airtight plastic container, which you mix when you are ready into a standard thimble of white base, keeping the acrylic fresh until just before you spray. A lot less inventory at the hobby shop to go bad too...
I just wish that whoever has Accu-paint now (true color?) would quit using the plastic bottles that allow the solvent to evaporate.
It still bugs me that all the formulas/production methods for making Floquil paints are somewhere and we can't have any. Doug
With most of my collection of paints slowly aging past the point of no return I have switched to Vallejo paints, For brush work or air brush they are superb. And they have an extensive pallet of colors and more shades can be developed by mixing with white or black. They have a number of military and maritime color sets plus a set for weathering and painting steam. The selection of colors numbers well over a hundred and they even have a set for creating weathered and aged wood which I just purchased.
Over the years Floquil, Polly S and Scalecoat II were my go to brands for model railroad paints. Since Testors has decided to drop the Floquil and Polly S lines in favor of Model Masters paints, I've been using Scalecoat II paint. I don't know what the shelf life of our model paints are, but yes I have quite a collection as well and so far all still seem to be OK.
Don't remember who it is, but my LHS now only carries two brands of paint and they BOTH come in frosted plastic bottles so you can't SEE what color they are (other than the name that really doesn't mean anything...SP Passenger Green is nothing CLOSE to anything SP painted their passenger cars).
Whoa, I didn't even know that Scalecoat paints were still sold. Thanks! I just found the manufactuer's website at [ https://www.minutemanscalemodels.com ].
Having as little air space as possible in whatever container you use is critical for very long storage. Finding something to drop into a bottle to take up space works or putting used paint into a smaller bottle. I have a large size bottle of Floquil PC green I bought in 1968 and have hardly used any of it over the years and it's good as new after over 50 years. Doug
Unless Rapido stopped making paint they have huge selection of RR color paints. They are acrylic paints.
Here's the link [ https://www.rapidotrains.com/products/accessories/protopaint/rapido-protopaint ]. I didn't know about this brand of paint. Airbrush ready! Available through Dealers only.
Above, I wrote, "...putting used paint into a smaller bottle." It obviously should be, "...putting unused paint into a smaller bottle." Doug
