H,
I just bought two of the new primers-Black and Desert sand to test, and those rub off very easily even after 24hours, total waste of money.
For comparison I brushed GSW (Greenstuffworld) matt primer and even after minutes it cannot be rubbed or scratched even with a nail! GSW primers are fantastic, but I wanted to try AK for local availability and bigger bottle for the price-wrong
3rd Gen paints are also troublesome-good for brush, but quite impossible to spray. Even Scale75 spray better.
I buy everything with my money, so I’m honest.
Just be warned
It is even worse than the Vallejo primer, which peels in big chunks, this just rubs off with finger, very disappointed! Same with their 3rd gen paints, the claim for strong grip and low separation is not very true. I will do more tests, but this is my personal experience.
Venelin
I bought several of the AK 3rd Generation sets and I find them quite nice; however, they are thicker than Vallejo paint in a bottle and AK 3rd Generation does streak and leave brush marks if not careful (Vallejo paints are thinner and easier to use and paint straight from the bottle).
I don’t know if this is a pro or con, but the AK 3rd Generation paint bottles have almost nothing to shake and mix, meaning I can’t hear the liquid swishing inside. AK 3rd GENs do come out well mixed though so I suppose that is a plus unlike Vallejos which ooze out thinner fluid first before paint.
I also have Scale75 paint bottle sets and I find that they’re odd despite the wonderful selection of colors. First off, Scale75 did not poke a hole into the eyedropper bottle so one has to open them by punching the top, not something I’d like to do because it’s not easy to punch a clean circular hole on a eyedropper top (a hobby knife is a flat blade, not a hole puncher. I had to resort to a small eyeglasses screwdriver). Furthermore, the Scale75 paint is so thick that it is gel-like and hard to squeeze out of the eyedropper bottle. I often wondered if I bought old sets where the thinner fluid dried in them as like AK 3rd Generation, there is nothing to mix and shake with Scale75 bottles.
So for me, the best bet has always been Vallejo acrylic eyedropper bottles as the easiest to use and paint with quickly even though coverage might take another coat.
Scale75 are very different animal, fantastic for blending, but not very friendly like Vallejo. I like their flat finish though. Yes, they are kind of gel type of paint, because of the blending properties.
My complain about the AK 3rd gen is their durability (the claim is that they are super resistant), the primer just rub off, I have some of their paints and I quite like them, they don’t separate as much as Vallejo or Scale75.
I thin with acrylic thinner (Scale75 and have some UMP thinner left), I will try with Mr. Leveling thinner, but this defeats the purpose of an acrylic primer and paint
As a side note, now after several days, it is more resilient, but still the GSW primer dries faster and more durable.
Probably I will find some use of the AK stuff.
Regards!
I hear you, enamels & lacquers do smell, have unpleasant clean up and require excellent ventilation. Airbrushing, I think it’s wise to use a quality rated respirator mask with ALL paint types.
However, acrylics often create a false sense of safety and impression as being less harmful than they actually are.
Airbrush or rattle can spray the small paint particles from acrylics are just as harmful as enamel from what I’ve gathered. Just like any concentration of dust particles are potentially bad, regardless of the source.
Basically, my thoughts are an “enamel spec primer coat or base coat” typically helps finicky, poorly adhering acrylic paints like Vallejo etc stay in place.
If you like Scale75 paints, you might try Andrea paints. I’m slowly replacing all my pure acrylic paints with them. A plus is that I can actually run them through the airbrush and you can thin down to the thinnest wash purely with water. They really are quite amazing.
FWIW, I seemed to have rectified my primer wearing off problem, as it only happens when I paint/handle my figures, so after the primer coat has dried, and it dries very fast I shoot a coat of flat/Matt varnish over the figure and it seals it good so as when I handle the figures it does not rub of.
GreenStuffWorld has some very unique products found nowhere else and their Customer Service is pretty good. They’re Legit; I just ordered from them not too long ago and I can’t find these products from other vendors.
