File:50 shades of gray - 46 of them water based acrylics DSC 0743 (15783296471).jpg

Like most airplane / car / space model builders, there always seems to be another gray I need to mix or match. I've got more, I just stopped at 50 for this picture, making sure to have my favorite, Polly Scale, well represented. Also Testor's Model Master Acryl II, (or just Acryl, nobody but me remembers the first version).

Polly Scale and Model Master paints are both made by the RPM company, but the Polly Scale paint costs $1 more per bottle, and is a superior brushing paint, in my opinion. Dead flat and able to be put on in extremely thin coats, Polly Scale is the water based paint that had the range and usability to allow me give up oil based paints.

Testor's Model Master Acryl is nearly as good, a little thinner, needing more coats to cover, but showing brush marks more as well. Go figure. They smell different.

Tamiya make an acrylic with an alcohol and water thinner that's like no other water based product. Its very thick, so seemingly covers in a few coats, but it builds up, especially the gloss versions. But the colors are beautiful and dense, the pigments very fine. Its like a super premium house paint. If you work diligently, you can build up 2 or 3 very thin coats of the gloss and get an actually glossy finish without it being too thick. Its not the most user-friendly but the cap molded in plastic the color of the paint, and the obsessive beauty of the colors, makes it hard to pass it by. It used to be the easiest to find, 30 years ago, but Testor's Acryl is easier in the USA today.

Gunzie Sangyo is another Japanese product, with the bottle caps molded in plastic (more or less) the color of the paint. They too have a unique not-just-water solvent system. Not the same as Tamiya, and the two don't actually mix very well. Unlike oil-based enamels, acrylic paints don't all play well together....

Some very good modelers swear by Tamiya, some by Model Master Acryl, some by Gunzie Sangyo, some by Polly Scale.

Rarer birds in this collection are bottles of Pactra's old acrylic line, before RPM bought them and "rationalized" their line to not complete with the flagship Testor's product. The Pactra bottles are 4th from the right, back row, and first on the left, 2nd from back row. They have black metal caps but a colored sticker that gives the stock number, name and FS595 number.

One squeeze bottle of "steel" is from Vallejo, in Spain, and a second bottle, next to it in the back row, is a stainless steel from Blick Art. The rarest bottle in this collection is the beige/khaki grey/tan directly in front of the Tamia spray can. It was a super-niche model paint marketed to Luftwaffe fans, and the color is RLM 02 gray.

Polly Scale is specialized stuff you have to look for. Hobbies Unlimited in San Lorenzo stocks it in railroad colors, in larger bottles, (1.5 oz? 2oz?) Sheldon's Hobbies in San Jose has all the military colors in the 3/4 ounce bottles. Both also have Acryl. Hobbies Unlimited and Berkeley Ace Hardware have Acryl, Tamiya, and others. Berkeley Ace has the newer Humbrol acrylic, and oil paints.

Boeing Aircraft Company's color 707 gray (between 706 and 708, not named after the popular 4 engine jet airliner) for 1/144 airliners was a good challenge for me- there were oil based versions available but no water based one when I started mixing my own. I ended up with 3 parts Testor's Model Master Acryl II 36495 gray and 8 parts Acryl flat white.

Then there are the pure metallic paints, - stainless steel made using powdered stainless steel, Aluminum made with powdered aluminum. And that maid of all work, metallic gray, a mix of black, white and aluminum pigment. Its #56 in Tamiya's acrylic range and it was #56 in the old Pactra oil-based model paint line too.

The Model Master rattle can gray is an oil-based paint, and the Tamiya is a synthetic lacquer. One bottle of 'silver', third from the back, third from the left edge, is Testor's famous Chrome Silver enamel. Another bottle of Testor's oil-based metallic paint is at the back left corner. The Testor's oil-based enamels are in 1/4 oz bottles.