alordofchaos

Dumb question, but...

I have one of those small tubes of touch-up paint that was left in the car by the PO, genuine Porsche Acrylic.

I started to touch up a few spots yesterday, but the paint thickened up too quickly. No instructions on cleanup on the bottle or indication on what the carrier is, or what I can use to thin the paint.

A bit of searching shows that most acrylic paint uses water as a carrier, but there's also acrylic enamels and acrylic lacquers. The only thing that the various websites I found agreed upon was that letting the paint dry on the brush would ruin the brush.

So - does anyone know for sure what I should use to thin this paint?

It was pretty dry on the brush already, and soaking it in water has not removed the paint from the bristles (though the bristles have loosened a bit - they're not sticking to each other anymore). I didn't have turpentine or mineral spirits or other solvents at home to test yesterday; will probably pick some up today on the way home from work. Thanks for helping!

Jeremy Himsel

Stop at a paint store and pick up a bit of reducer. A few drops in the touch up paint will thin it out.

alordofchaos

Jeremy, I don't mean to be a dumbass, but what is "reducer"?

Is it a normal solvent, like mineral spirts, turpentine, etc.?

Any paint store, like paints for the home, etc.? There's a few home repair chain stores on the way home I could check out (Home Depot type stores)

xsboost90

enamel reducer.

alordofchaos

Enamel reducer works on acrylic touchup paint?

Wait - Dan, you're saying that the touch up paint is acrylic enamel! Did a light bulb just go off over my head?

I haven't used paints (other than water-based latex) in decades... is enamel reducer the same as turpentine? The only thing I remember is way back when, there used to be something called "paint thinner" and it was just turpentine.

Thanks!

testarossa_td

You might do a search on here. There are some who have fixed key marks, stone chips etc with touch-up paint and then after it dried cleaned it flush with some thinner on a rag on a block of wood. Search first and even then use your own discretion.

Here is another possibly safer solution as well.

https://rennlist.com/forums/showpost...90&postcount=5

alordofchaos

Testarossa, the search I did (and the link you posted) have a lot of good info on blending the paint in afterwards, but nothing on thinning the paint before application (tho' I missed the brakleen one earlier). I know, always search before asking! Web searches didn't help, either - not enough info on thinning out the paint, too many "how to paint your cars" and "we sell this" hits.

Everything's pointing to the OEM touch up tube paint being acrylic enamel, so I'm thinking adding a bit of mineral spirits to the tube should do the trick (I only found one bottle of "enamel reducer" - which was also labelled "mineral spirits" - but was priced at $43, so I just bought a bottle of mineral spirits for $3).

So unless someone says , I'll be adding the mineral spirits in to thin it out.

I'm using a fine artist's brush and properly thinned, I can lay down consistent 1/32" line of paint by hand - good enough so that by layering it on properly thin, knocking it down afterwards will be pretty minor.