Air Brushing problems - paint is tacky

Hello, I tried airbrushing for the first time under the advice of my local hobby store. I am using Testors cheapy air brush, and it worked just fine. Paint laid down perfectly and looks perfect.

The problem I am having about 18 hours later is that the paint is still a bit tacky/sticky.

I wonder if I have not waited long enough for the paint to dry, or if I had to rich a mixture of thinner vs. paint.

FYI, again, it is a Testors AB, I am using gloss red out of a Testors paint bottle..., ie., the little bitty standard square bottles. And hobby/air brush thinnner. The ratio I used was 1 to 1 as per the model instructions.

The model itself is your standard styrene car plastic body. I laid down a base coat, then a final coat with about 1 hour in between coats.

Like I said, the paint job looks BEAUTIFUL, but it is still sticky. Should I just wait longer for it to dry? I had it in my garage paint booth, but moved it inside today because I am assuming the humidity is certainly not going to help with dry time.

Appreciate any help. Thank you!

-jer

Rasputin welcome to the forum, I'm glad you joined

Yes, I definetely think you should wait some more, cause else your paint job will be destroyed.

It usually takes 24 hours to dry completely

Thank you for the response. It has been 48 hours and it is still a little tacky, so I figured I would lay a clear coat on it. This time I sprayed testors clear gloss out of the can into a air brush bottle and layed it down. So far so good. Hopefully the clear drys on top of the tacky red..

Rasputin, is it ok now?

Dude, did you prime?

Using several paint layers before allowing a good cure can cause an everlasting tackiness to the paint when applied. Another common problem is that if you don't prime the paint reacts to the plastics, and never, ever dries. Finally, remember to mix your paint well and use a thinner for the airbrush that is an exact match to the thinner in the bottle...I've used toluene sucessfully (no smoking in the area!) to thin Testor's but I'd argue that the best paints to use are Apple Barrel acrylics, thinned with good old H20, and once dry (wait 72 hours, to be sure) you can clearcoat the whole thing....looks great!

Try a 50/50 mix of airbrush thinner and Naphtha. Try on some scrap FIRST! Naphtha accelerates drying

That just lays down over the paint, or should I mix it with the paint and thinner mix?

Thanks.

don't give up and wait...it has to dry sometime and humidity can be a factor also air conditioning in the room will do that too! Airbrushing teaches patience.