Is there more reason than just for looks that we typically use Matt enamels?

[Jockabilly 576]

Hi folks. Been away from modelling for a couple of years and now just getting back to it so I thought I'd pop in hear for a question/discussion on the subject of Matt, Satin and Gloss enamels. 

Before I start I must say that I'm glad to see some names I know of old here and that you are still kicking. 

Right - I have always been a user of enamels and all oil based paints and swear by them whereas I more often than not swore at acrylics whenever I used them. As well as a large, but aging, stock of Humbrol enamels I also have a broad range of professional signwriters enamels. The main difference of course is that Signwriters enamels are gloss and are rather cheaper than Humbrol at approximately £10 per 250ml. Anyway so what I am puzzling over is - 

Is there any reason other than it's always been that way, that we use matt and satin paints. I can understand that, from the point of view of Airfix and Humbrol it was, in no small part due to the fact that anyone could buy a kit, buy some paints of the suitable colour and finish and whack their model together. Of course the 'serious' modeller then may often spray a gloss varnish or Klear over their paintwork then decal it then another coat of varnish over the top. The decalling and final varnishing stages would seem, to me at least, to totally negate any value in using expensive little tins of paint in the desired colour. 

When it comes to obtaining paints I am seriously considering ordering a few tins of the most common colours. Craftmaster paints who specialise in Signwriting, Engine and Coachpainting enamels can provide BS and RAL colours and will also match any colour a customer desires although I think their minimum order for a mix is 500ml and it's a bit more expensive. 

Interested to hear the thoughts and opinions of all here. 

[Tolvcat 5,201]

My own experience from the days when I still used enamels was that matt brushed on more evenly and dried much much quicker meaning I could finish something in hours using a single coat of each colour.

Gloss was an utter pig to use and I hated it with a passion. Satin was somewhere in the middle - a bit of a chore but at least it wasn't gloss.

I have woodwork round the house now that could do with fresh paint but it's not happening because I don't do gloss 

Varnish was pretty much unheard of and decals just had to take their chances. I've only started using it since I switched to acrylics and I only started with those because I bought Citadel paints for my Games Workshop figures and found them much more user friendly 

Andy

[Gorby 21,725]

Marty! Welcome back, I was only think about what may have happened to you a couple of months ago. Good to see you back. 

I'm one of the acrylic heathens (as I'm a heathen in all things. ) I've definitely used gloss acrylic when I've been short of the matt colour - as you say, you're going to use a matt varnish so what's the point of using matt to start with.

[RWG686 40,787]

Much like @Tolvcat I do not like gloss enamel paint and always found it hard to brush paint with them. I still brush paint for 95% of my models.

Some acrylics I have had great success with others not so.

[Mad Steve 25,134]

Nice to see you back kicking and screaming Jockabilly 

I used Humbrol tins from the year dot. Like you said, it was just the done thing and back then there were no other paint choices (where i lived anyway) Humbrol got the boot when their paint wouldnt last 2 months (after having tins that were 20 plus years old and still worked) Long story short, im now on Tamiya acrylics and Lacquers. 

I like the matt fininsh of the acrylics, and the semi gloss of the lacquers and hate gloss paint, but that goes back to even the humbrol days. More often then not i will use matt or semi gloss paint with gloss clear over it for a gloss finish. I dont use floor polish on my kits (Klear) 

Funny enough, if i was still brush painting I would go back to Humbrol(if they actually lasted) because they are just so easy to use. 

I know a lot of guys that buy mixed paint in half litre tins because it goes a lot longer than the little tins or bottles. Ive tried pre mixed semi gloss black, its the colour i use the most and ended up giving it away. Didnt like it. 

Would I change now?. I dont think so, unless I wasn't able to afford the paint anymore. 

A good think to thunk about. Nice one 

[steelpillow 1,022]

Historically, Humbrol just made hobby paints, mostly gloss. Then plastic aircraft modelling took off in the late 1960s and 70s, and they brought out ranges of camo colours to satisfy WWII modellers. Most of us were, and still are, useless at mix'n'matching our own batches all the time, so we wanted them to be "authentic" out of the tin and that meant matt, so matt they were. It also proved popular for two mundane reasons; matt requires less binder in the formula and so has greater covering power, and its surface dries quicker so stops showing finger marks sooner.

But then we found that decals over matt tend to show pale blotches, or even flake off, where the glue hadn't stuck down properly. So we learned to gloss varnish over the matt to make the decals stick, and then matt varnish to finish off. As more brands got in on the act, we all still wanted matt because that was the authentic finish, so the big colour ranges stayed mostly matt, with satin also finding its niche.

I always found that matting down a gloss finish is harder than glossing up a matt one, so ended up using semi-gloss/satin under the decals and adding decalfix to the water. Full-on Kleer may be great for airliners and shiny silver birds, but harder to matt back down for camouflaged warplanes. In my humble opinion, far too many come out too shiny and toy-like.

Nowadays we model anything that moves, and pretty much anything else that doesn't. Military vehicles, clothing, building materials, wooden ships, monsters, all these things are naturally fairly matt, seldom use (m)any decals and so don't need varnishing. Aircraft are the exception. So unless your paint is a generic hobby colour, or a polished/fast jet plane colour, it stays matt. Annoying to the seasoned WWII aero specialist who has to (semi-)gloss, decal, and then matt back down, but we are not the dominant species that we were back in the 1970s and the manufacturers have to watch their costs.

Enamel vs. acrylic is one of those "tea or coffee?" type things; enamels take longer to dry unless you add an accelerator, acrylics are much quicker unless you add retardant. Then again, solvent-based acrylics are now a thing, alongside the traditional water-based products. Whatever floats your boat. Nowadays we also have "lacquers" - this may not mean cellulose as it used to (and down at Halfords it still does), but embraces all kinds of proprietary enamel and acrylic concoctions whose only common factor is astronomical price.

[Jockabilly 576]

Thanks for the welcome guys. I have undergone a change since losing my mojo and all my WWI 1/32 scale kits are in storage and I am throwing myself at a broad selection of modern, detailed 1/72 WWII kits.

The thing about enamels and this applies to all oil based paints is that you have to understand the material and get the right, professional type in my opinion. In signwriting and coachpainting the paint is designed to be the best consistency to provide good coverage but dry slowly enough to level off before it dries too much and be as opaque as possible. I was generally airbrushing or just slapping the paint on with a normal artists type round brush when I was modelling and it never occur to me to apply signwriting techniques to the process. I am now experimenting with using my signwriting 'Chisel' brushes and using a signwriters brush stroke and it seems to be producing good results so far. The paint is thin enough that it doesn't obscure any of the details and two thin coats, even of white, are producing a solid colour. 

A wee tip when it comes to enamels 'skinning' in the tin. The original chemical, now outlawed. that stopped the skinning was called MEKO and basically it formed a heavy solvent vapour barrier in the tins stopping oxygen getting to the paint and drying it. A company called Brushmate used to use it to do the same job in a box they sell which decorators put their brushes in to stop the paint drying on them while they store them between jobs. They have now formulated a new solvent to do the same job as MEKO did and I add it to my paints, especially when the tins are getting empty, to stop a skin forming on them. This is more important than how tight the lid is when it come to stopping a skin forming. 

[Jockabilly 576]

Oh I forgot to add that in my opinion, three or four years ago, Humbrol really screwed up with their recipes. My guess is that someone at the plant was preparing it who had no experience. The tins I have appear to have far too much pigment, not enough solvent and zero 'Driers' with the result that they are more like artists oil paint taking weeks to dry and gooey and well essentially useless. I have treated all the one's I have with a mixture of cobalt driers, liquid alkyd resin and shellsol T and they perform well once sorted out. 

[steelpillow 1,022]

37 minutes ago, Jockabilly said:

Oh I forgot to add that in my opinion, three or four years ago, Humbrol really screwed up with their recipes. My guess is that someone at the plant was preparing it who had no experience. The tins I have appear to have far too much pigment, not enough solvent and zero 'Driers' with the result that they are more like artists oil paint taking weeks to dry and gooey and well essentially useless. I have treated all the one's I have with a mixture of cobalt driers, liquid alkyd resin and shellsol T and they perform well once sorted out. 

Stir, stir and stir again. Keep a sharp eye on the end of the stirrer for globs of thick stuff, and keep going til they disappear and you can't scrape any more up. When all looks perfect, keep stirring for another minute. Even if you use it every day, give it a quick stir before use. This has always fixed my drying issues with Humbrol (but see below).

The main screw-up was outsourcing to China, I dunno, 15-20 years ago? Quality ceased to exist at that point, but it was a few years before they could bring manufacture back in-house and print Union Jacks on the cans - only to find that the learning curve had to be climbed all over again. Yes the thickness of the available paints is highly variable, from airbrush-ready to cake mix, but one never knows how old the particular tin is. Nowadays their big problem is justifying a range big enough not to implode as its relentless shrinkage drives away loyalists equally relentlessly, in a downward spiral. I get a goodly portion of my colours from retailers' old stocks being sold off on eBay.

[Jockabilly 576]

The really strange thing is that I can leave a tin of Coach enamel or Signwriting enamel for weeks, open it and it barely needs stirring with no solids on the bottom of the tin just some separation of pigment/Alkyd oil resin and solvent. I would guess that a lot of it has to do with the particle size that Humbrol use and the matting agents also employed. 

I just might sacrifice one of my kits to see how the signwriting paints might do, I have colours, ready mixed, that aren't at all far off Humbrol 29 and 30 so I could easily do an airfix Spit as a test.

I might also see about buying some fast drying 'Japan' alkyd colours from Craftmaster to try. There are far fewer choices of colours in that range but they dry to a satin finish so at the very least a tins of Black and White would come in handy. 

[Mad Steve 25,134]

19 minutes ago, steelpillow said:

The main screw-up was outsourcing to China, I dunno, 15-20 years ago? 

Yep, SP is correct, was about 2000 ish I stopped using Humbrol after a tin of the Leather Colour lasted two days. Opened on the weekend to paint some seats, opened again on Tuesday or Wednesday and it had a hard skin over it and it was like stirring Cake mix.  (And did you notice, it didn't smell the same)

Jockabilly, what is the difference between your signwriters paint and your normal bog standard Enamel paint you can buy from the paint shop?

(I know it's a bit of a HEATHEN!!!! question, I'm just trying to understand why it might be easier to use, because this isn't the first time I've read about someone using it on models)

[Jockabilly 576]

Ah well you see the bog standard paint you can buy from the paint shop is formulated for use by amateurs for basic jobs where a great finish isn't expected. It tends to be thicker so it's not as easy to make a mess with it and dry quicker because people typically like to slap it on heavy and want it to be dry quickly at the same time. The signwriters paints are formulated to be moderately 'runny' to go on thin, level easily and be touch dry within about two hours in moderate temperatures. Coach painters enamels are as thin as water and take about twelve hours to be dry enough for another coat with the aim being that they level off even more before drying. An expert coach painter can achieve a mirror finish that will outshine any spray paint when it comes to bodywork without so much as a polish or a rub down of the surface. I used to know an old coach painter and he told me that, back in the days when it was the way to do high end paintwork, the paint shed would be swept repeatedly to try and eliminate any dust and the coach painters would strip down to the bare minimum and cover themselves in grease to minimise the risks of hair, dust and skin flakes getting on the finish. The one problem with enamels is that they don't sand down very well which is why it was vital to get the perfect finish first time. 

On the question of difference between 'professional' and 'consumer' paints, if you've ever used 'trade' grade gloss paint you will find it's an awful lot runnier than everyday DiY shop liquid gloss. You use it with proper decorators brushes like Hamilton 'Perfection' that cost an awful lot more than the crappy DiY paint brushes and, when you dip your brush in the paint you then hold it above the tin/paint scuttle until the paint stops running off it and then spread thinly, leave to dry and repeat several times. The finish that results is head and shoulders above the typical DiY 'throw the brush at it and be damned' finish but requires time and patience. No good decorator would ever use that 'Gel' garbage either that's for folks who can't even handle thick liquid paint. 

The reality is that enamels, gloss house paint and even hammerite types are generally all the same stuff. The Alkyd resins (modified linseed oil usually) is bought by the company making the paint and they then mix it with their pigments and adjust the drying rate and thickness to their particular aim. I only know of one seller who sells Alkyd resin to the general public and that is Jacksonsart who sell it as Fast drying oil medium in Gloss and Satin and there is a product called Owatrol Oil which, as far as I can tell, is a mixture of Alkyd medium and thinners. Owatrol is sold as 'paint conditioner' and is meant to make your Alkyd paints runnier without making the actual paint film weaker or less flexible. 

Edited September 16 by Jockabilly

[Jockabilly 576]

Oh a wee tip  for those who routinely use enamels from the world of signwriting. Once a brush is rinsed in thinners after use either coat the hairs in 'neatsfoot' oil ( a non drying oil made from boiled down cows) or a coating of petroleum jelly. This will stop any residue of the paint that hasn't been completely washed out of the hairs drying in the brush and ruining it and will also keep the brushes shape and stops dust etc. from getting into the hairs. You just have to remember to rinse the brush in your thinners before using it to get the neatsfoot or petroleum jelly off. 

I am contemplating creating my own version of my large 'Brushmate' box that I can use for round, artists type, brushes so that I can keep brushes in it which should stop paint ever drying out in the brush hairs. The principle is simply a means of suspending the brush, hair downwards in a closed box with a dish of the Brushmate solvent or pad soaked in it on the bottom that you can suspend the brushes in and, as long as the Brushmate fluid is present brushes, even coated in a lot of enamel, should stay useable and wet for weeks, months or even years when not in use. 

Edited September 17 by Jockabilly

[Mad Steve 25,134]

1 hour ago, Jockabilly said:

(a non drying oil made rom boiled down cows) 

 I would really like to see that Saucepan 

[RWG686 40,787]

2 hours ago, Jockabilly said:

. The principle is simply a means of suspending the brush, hair downwards in a closed box with a dish of the Brushmate solvent or pad soaked in it

Seems a lot of effort. Why not just clean the brush after use ?

Have you seen these enamels? Excellent they are.

https://www.sovereignhobbies.co.uk/collections/colourcoats

[Jockabilly 576]

It's really about keeping the brushes in good condition. I have a three wash system for my brushes where I use three jars of white spirit, Dirty, cleaner and cleanest. If you really want to keep brushes in tip top condition then you either need to then wash them thoroughly with soap and water or the alternative is to either coat the hairs in something that excludes oxygen and so stops any paint residue from drying out deep in amongst the hairs or use a brush box with brushmate vapour fluid in it. All brushes will suffer a build up of paint particles in and around where the hairs meet the ferrule and this causes them to lose their shape as it hardens unless you take precautions to preserve them. If you are using small brushes and synthetics that only cost a pound or two each then it's probably as economical to treat them as disposable but, if you are using brushes that can cost up to and over a hundred pounds each it's worth taking good care of them and they will last decades. I hate to think how much all my brushes cost me to buy but it's over a thousand pounds in total anyway. 

It's also handy if you want to stop painting for an hour or two and then come back to it. Just stick the brush in the brush box and pick it back up when you are ready. 

I recently put a fresh coat of paint on both my shed and my big Brush Box was a real Godsend. I did a couple of hours of painting, then as it looked like rain, I just stuck the brush in the box and got back to it in a day or two when the rain stopped. Due to weather conditions I had to stop several times for days and even a week once. To properly wash out my four inch Hamilton Perfection brush (cost about thirty or forty quid if I recall correctly) would take a fair amount of time and a lot of white spirit and a brush comb followed by soapy water and then leaving it to dry properly.

[RWG686 40,787]

3 minutes ago, Jockabilly said:

it's over a thousand pounds

I probably have spent that on modelling brushes too but over 60 years.

Your answer negates my question.

[skwonk 9,661]

I can't remember the last time I brushed a matt enamel. In fact, I don't even think I have any as I only ever spray Xtracolor or Humbrol gloss with a finish of matt/satin mix varnish. I do have some Colourcoats which I only ever use for filth or cruddiness spray work.

[steelpillow 1,022]

Yep, soap and warm water after every use. If paint does build up as the brush heads for middle-age, then decal softeners or Revell enamel "thinners" both do the biz.

Sticking wet enamel/oil brushes in a jar of water overnight to keep the oil in there is an old decorator's trick, works brilliantly. Just shake/wipe the brush off before its first load of the new day. Not recommended for long periods though, because rust.

[Gorby 21,725]

16 hours ago, Jockabilly said:

I just stuck the brush in the box and got back to it in a day or two when the rain stopped.

I do the same for DIY brushes (not great quality ones) but I use a zip-lock plastic bag which works well for a few days as long as you expel as much air as possible from the bag.

[Jockabilly 576]

That's exactly the thing @GorbyIt's the oxygen in the air that reacts with the paint and 'dries' it out. Oil based paints actually 'dry' by an oxidation process and so, if you exclude the oxygen by either immersing the brush in water, keeping it in a bag with less air than would be needed to oxidise the volume of paint on the brush, or suspending it in a box with a pad in the bottom of it that basically forms a contained cloud of heavy vapour that excludes the oxygen your brushes won't dry out. The very same effect is why enamels used an 'anti-skinning' agent (the same stuff used in the vapour box) added to them to keep the air from getting to the surface of the paint. When it comes to the paint of course, over time, with repeated opening and closing of the tin, the vapour gradually evaporates off and, at the same time as the paint depletes, the volume of oxygen increases and so your tins start to grow a skin on the paint. The paint under the skin should be perfectly useable, if possibly a little thicker, but when it comes to teensy little 14ml model paint tins it's hard to get at it and remove it cleanly and, if there is little paint left under it it's hardly worth it. 

I am doing the final assembly on an Airfix Spit Mk.1 ready to go to paint and I'm planning to paint it using signwriting enamels over the next few days to see how they perform. If I haven't missed my mark, I think they might just cover better, in a thinner coat than Matt modelling enamels do after all they are formulated to maximise coverage in a single coat (The biggest US brand is called 'One Shot'), leave minimal brushmarks, allow fine writing in crisp detail and dry quickly because they are often painted in situ outdoors. Not that different a set of specifications to what we want in model paints. I might be wrong, I might be right but there's only one way to find out. 

[RWG686 40,787]

1 hour ago, Jockabilly said:

am doing the final assembly on an Airfix Spit Mk.1 ready to go to paint and I'm planning to paint it using signwriting enamels over the next few days to see how they perform

Would you pop some photos to let us see please ?

[Gorby 21,725]

10 hours ago, Jockabilly said:

I am doing the final assembly on an Airfix Spit Mk.1 ready to go to paint and I'm planning to paint it using signwriting enamels over the next few days to see how they perform.

I'd love to know how that turns out.

[Mad Steve 25,134]

Even I would look... (Even though it's a Spitfire, eeeuuwww) 

[steelpillow 1,022]

Just

17 hours ago, Jockabilly said:

Airfix Spit Mk.1 ready to go to paint and I'm planning to paint it using signwriting enamels over the next few days

May I suggest you try a test piece first? Vehicle "enamels" and similar are apt to eat into the plastic, creating various crinkly/crazed effects. Some modellers like to use them, so they routinely apply a safe primer coat first. If signwriting paints are similar, then you might find you have an elegant but not very authentic crinklefire on your hands.