Hi Barry, can I ask what you use to remove the surplus enamel wash?This is what I use starting from the basis that lacquers are by far the best performers through the airbrush.
First: get rid of sanding rubble, finger grease and other contaminants from the surface with a good wipe of isopropanol alcohol.
Primer:
MRP lacquer based primer though I consider Stynylrex (and white labelled versions) a decent alternative.
Base coat:
Always MRP, these are the best airbrush paints so why use anything else.
The MRP lacquer metallisers are as good as the paints. So these are used where spraying metallics.
Detail painting with hairy stick.
Water based acrylics are best for this so I use the MRP water based range or Vallejo. These work well over MRP, lacquers would be a problem in re-activating the sprayed colour.
For metallics though I use AKI’s wax metallisers which thin with enamel thinners. The coverage is excellent but you have to make sure that you apply a decent varnish coat over them before weathering.
Varnish.
ideally a water based varnish would be best such as Alclad Aqua or Vallejo would be best over MRP but I have often found that these will pool and be problematical. I therefore use lacquers as these varnishes spray as faultlessly as the paint. Therefore it is MRP. Care has to be taken though not to ladown heavy coats because if you do the paint will be reactivated and will be a problem. So these are used in very light coats building up slowly. Thee great thing is that MRP provide a matt, semi-matt, gloss and semi-gloss enabling you to get the sheen that you want, not necessarily the same all over a model.
I do keep some enamel varnish as I find this useful to use with a hairy stick to replicate glass dials and similar.
Weathering washes
Always over varnished surfaces. The only exception being the MRP metallisers, I try not to varnish over these to preserve the metallic effect. I use AKI and Mig enamel washes. These tend to work well over the lacquer varnish, run nicely in panel lines and removing the surplus does not remove any varnish. For safety I do leave the varnish a longer curing time than I usually do, an hour or so rather than 30 minutes, before washes.
So water, lacquer and enamel products can work well together with each having strengths that are complimentary to each other.
My routine at the moment is.
Tamiya primer decanted from a spray can then airbrushed, tamiya XF, gloss coat with alclad 2, decals, alclad 2 then finish with a 50/50 mix of humbrol matt and tamiya lacquer thinners.
everyting going really well with the above untilI wanted to try adding a wash for the first time and the varnish.
It’s annoying that my stumbling block is right at the end process, I dread to think how many hours I spent on my Brewster to ruin it at the end.
cheers
Matt