Starting over, rebuilding my paint rack - need advice on acrylics

[Diamondback]

First, let me caveat I'm in the US, so suggestions not available here are no help. (This excludes GSI Creos and some other brands.)

Before my long walk-away, I had found myself forced by "mobile modeling" requirements to switch from enamel to acrylics. Since the deathknell of Model Master, my go-tos for WWII have been a series of custom mixes using Vallejo Model Color that an old friend from my Axis & Allies Miniatures days developed for painting wargaming minis, but lately Vallejo has been wholesale canceling broad swaths of their line, the reformulations are even more "off" than the originals and the only way you can reliably get them now is buying a fully-loaded rack at a time per one shop I stopped at today.

Are there any real winners left in US-market acrylics that are brush thickness (so no Squadron Scale Colors pre-thinned)?

Here's the Weedsrock2 Guide to WWII Air/Ship Paint Mixes I've used just about forever:
https://app.box.com/s/istm0needbufr1micfa71wvcgyfppi0a

Right now I'm mostly working on the US big-deck carriers, the four Iowas, Mutsu and Nagato in 1/2000 (all I could get so far) and a bunch of 1/200 Trumpeter carrier birds and B-25s plus some 3d-print A6M2s and Japanese floats (Rufe, Pete, Jake), along with a couple Black Widows. (The P-61s are strictly personal; since the boys in Italy I work with have some trouble getting their colors even remotely right--you can tell they were once owned by Italeri from one look at their take on Memphis Belle!--so the rest of the planes are trying to create reference samples about "THIS is what your planes SHOULD look like.")

The ships are "personal" too--they have no intention of ever doing anything beyond flat paper "targets" but I'm trying to work up options for how those inclined to invest a little more time, money and effort can really spruce up the gaming table. (And maybe slide in a supplement for ship-on-ship engagement with air support.) Here again, there's a shouting match - most of the action in our upcoming South Pacific project is cruisers and destroyers,

Is there any community consensus on best fits in brush-on acrylic for the various USN 5-__ colors or the four IJN grays, or on M485/M495 and the Army-Navy Aviation color system? The screaming nightmare even to IJAAF/IJNAF experts of Japanese colors and reconciling the IJA/IJN and Thorpe color systems is a problem I'm not ready to even think about yet but one I will have to face someday.

[frank2056]

In terms of acrylics, I don't think there are any good US based companies. I use the following exclusively and like them all, although I've been using the AK and Atom paints more, recently:

Vallejo acrylics -
pros: good coverage, range of colors, easy to thin and clean with alcohols (isopropyl or denatured) or airbrush thinners. Can be brushed on with some experimentation. Their special metallic colors are awesome.
cons: dried paint can wear off with handling, even over primer. The Vallejo airbrush thinner works with all acrylics below.

AK Interactive 3rd Gen -
pros: very high pigment density, so a small amount goes a long way. Bottle cap design keeps paint fresh. Paint in bottle only requires modest shaking to mix. Great range of colors
cons: cannot be thinned with alcohols. You have to use their thinner (which has isopropyl as an ingredient - go figure) water or Vallejo airbrush thinner. dried paint can wear off with handling. High pigment density requires some experimentation to get the right ratio for airbrushing (or cleaning). Can be brushed on.

Atom by Mig Jimenez -
pros: Great paint with excellent coverage. Can be thinned with alcohols. Somewhat stronger than the above when dry. Spays beautifully - almost like an enamel.
cons: Range isn't as big yet.

Tamiya acrylics
pros: Classic acrylic paint. Can be thinned with alcohols. Great coverage when thinned properly.
cons: Limited range, difficult to brush paint without a lot of experimentation. Slightly more expensive than the above acrylics.

                     

[Diamondback]

Just to be clear, I don't necessarily care about US *based,* just *readily available* here. Vallejo has done an Admiral Ozzel and "failed me or the last time," so I'm looking for someeone to replace them as my primary source,

[frank2056]

What happened with the Vallejo?

Try Tamiya or Atom. Both are great. The AK 3rd Gen takes some experimentation.

Scale Hobbyist is where I usually order my paints.

[Diamondback]

Frank, as I said they discontinued way too many colors the recipes I rely on needed and have been doing an absolute crap job at maintaining supply chain (that may just be around Puget Sound/Seattle, or maybe just for Certain retailers*) for some reason.
*Granted, whoever planned the paint and model selection at Hobby Lobby doesn't help, you can tell they see 'em as "toys for kids" rather than a serious discipline because the ONLY kits you can complete using only materials from that aisle with no "second store" are the prepainted snap-and-screw-together kiddie-grade stuff.

If memory serves, Atom is airbrush and I'm stick-and-hair. (I HAVE an airbrush and compressor for acrylics IF I can ever get a few minutes to set it up... mostly for metallics.) Remember, most of the projects on my workbench are about as long as a finger, maybe a hand... I'll take a look though. I asked my friend who made up the formulas based on Snyder & Short chips and he found them outside his comfort zone for "close fit".

[Wardukw]

Mate check our Ammo paints by Mig...the range is huge...with well 300 colours... It's world wide and I brush detail paint with em  all the time .
Ammo also do paint sets just for aircraft..ships and it seems damn near everything military.

Also Army Painter 2 paints...their range is getting very large and the second series is far better than their first .
Fact checking out acrylic gaming paints in general might help ya...you've got a huge selection in the US to choose from..here in NZ we have j/s so you guys are super lucky there and there's ton of reviews on YouTube about em to take a gander at
Quite a few of the colours won't be any use cause of the gene there made for..Warhammer and the like but the amount of grays they have alone is wicked .

[Diamondback]

Wardukw, I've been looking (Reaper, Army Painter and GW Citadel are easily available cash-n-carry here), but I was hoping someone had already found a group of matches for the USN 5-_ and ANA colors and that there was a community consensus about "best fits" for each.

I sent the guys at Army Painter a note asking about this since they're partnering with Warlord on some of their games a couple weeks ago, but... crickets.

[Rick Lowe]

There was a paint match spreadsheet online a while ago, but I'm not sure where it is, or how up-to-date..
IPMS Stockholm did a match chart a while ago, too.

[zenrat]

I have a phone app called Hobby Color Converter.
If you have a Federal Standard No. it will show you equivalencies.
Or alternatively if you have a model paint you know is "correct" (assuming its one of those they list) you can look up equivalencies for that.

You can also tag which paints you have and which ones you need which is handy when shopping.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pulgadas.hobbycolorconverter&hl=en-US&pli=1

https://erminesoft.com/app/hobby-color-converter/

HTH

[Diamondback]

Zen, all well and good for post-WWII - I have it myself. The rub is, very few of the US WWII colors are in FS595... the version of ANA623 Gloss Dark Sea Blue that became FS15042 dates to around 1946-47, and the 5-_ ship paints aren't at all.

And that's only US, not even getting into the screaming nightmare of Japanese colors.