hey guys,i got some problems about different thinners, and i need ur help.
1.what's the difference between MIG's thinner for washes and AK's white spirit?
are they just the same thing as mineral spirit？
2. i tried to thin tamiya's enamel paint with mineral spirit but it doesn't work,just got some grain's looking mixture，can mig's thinner do the job?
3i used to use zippo oil to thin enamel and oil colors for filter and washes,and it works well. the problem is that zippo oil dries too fast taht hard to control the result,
any method to slow down dry time?
many thanks

hi Mauro
thanks for ur help. so AK's spirit is not hhat worthy and i'll still use mineral spirit

i'm using tamiya's enamel paint, some bottled one, maybe the formula is different from humbrol's. it's sad that humbrol is not available here
by the way thanks for ur advice. have a good day

Mauro,

In some countries, Tamiya sells an enamel range. These paints are numbered exactly the same as the acrylics (eg. X/XF) but are are bottled differently (as noted above) and are most certainly different chemistries.

Zippo fluid is naptha, and evaporates faster than pretty much anything. At the same time it allow you to work faster, it also wouldn't break up paint pigments as well as mineral spirit. Filters done with zippo fluid looked chalky and uneven, not a very good solvent IMO.

ya, acrylic is the best to get to the fine density and evenness filters need, but having solvent drying so fast can cause headaches, on top of the fact water has high surface tension, and won't allow pigments to lay down evenly around the boundaries. Tide marks can become headaches if concentrations of pigments are not spread out in time. There's a trick though. You can add clean water to the edges as it dries to continue spreading out the pigments. Just make sure you add very little so you don't re-wet the center areas.

There are other advantages using acrylic filters. For one, transparency/opacity is easier to adjust. Colors are easier to grasp too, since what you see is pretty much what you will get.

The mineral spirit and enamel/oil combination is safer, but results are inferior to acrylic, especially now there are abundant choices of acrylic colors that are dead flat. Mineral spirit is also thicker and more "flowy" than water, making control of small regional coverages difficult. If you want a lot of variations, you have to use acrylic. The oil route will more or less make the colors blend together and become indistinguishable from one another.

Haven said that, this change of surface tension does not work on the inner side of the boundary, so it only solves one side of the problem.

There's a trick though. You can add clean water to the edges as it dries to continue spreading out the pigments. Just make sure you add very little so you don't re-wet the center areas.