Painting question: Enamel on acrylic primer?

[Thorsten Frank]

Just found some older Revell enamel paints and I wonder if they would work on an acrylic undercoat. It´s even more tricky because they´re plastic minis and I don´t want to ruin them. In my case it would be silver and red enamel on an light gray primer.
Somebody here who tried this?

"In strange grammar this one writes" - Master Yoda

[fairoaks024]

Should work absolutely fine.

 

ive done it a few times over the years with no problems.

I regularly use enamel varnish over acrylic paints as well.

[Thorsten Frank]

Thank you for the answer!

"In strange grammar this one writes" - Master Yoda

[jeffers]

I wouldn’t use enamels on plastics again. I’m solely using acrylics because they form a flexible skin over the figure. Enamels tend to crack, even with the acrylic undercoat.

Having said that, my original Airfix type 1 8th army (purchased 1969, painted 1977-ish) were painted in Airfix enamels and have not shed a single bit of paint! This may be down to the more robust figures, though. Later plastics have thinner weapons and more easy to bend.

More nonsense on my blog: http://battle77.blogspot.com/

[Piyan Glupak]

The advice that I received when I started wargaming was that it is okay to put spirit based paints or varnish on acrylics, and vica versa, but you need to allow at least 24 hours for the previous paint to dry.  (30 hours is more than 24 hours but 22 hours isn’t.)  You don’t need to wait that long putting water-based paint on water-based paint, or spirit-based paint on spirit-based paint.  The person giving that advice painted figures for a living at that time, and I believe them.  The only time that I tried to speed things up, the figures  didn’t work out as well as they should have.

[Oh no….]

I’ve used enamels on medium and hard plastics and never had a problem. They always get a black undercoat.

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