I've recently discovered that this Tamiya product makes a terrific primer, particularly on kits with many puttied areas.

It shrinks into details (no pigments to carry) yet fills and seals porous areas (with polishing or a second coat) in a visible and predictable way... Regular primer will fill details after a few reapeated sandings, or even simply with a single thick coat, and on top of that it is porous itself: I would not use that again on aircrafts, particularly to check the blending-in of canopies, where mask removal revealed the weakening effect of the primer on the paint... Paint that is kept away from the plastic by a weak layer is weaker, since friable regular primer is a structurally weak barrier to the bonding, which is not the case of a TS-13 lacquer gloss coat...

This for me is a huge advance in the appearance of my several putty-intensive kits, and it is useful for most airplane kits I would think... I got the idea from an article by a builder who went by the nickname "Dr Asher", for his 1/48th scratchbuilt B-32...

On vehicles the flat surfaces are not so great for gloss, as it tends to run or poodle on these: I would not necessarily use that on a tank for instance...

Also note TS-13 does not crinkle or attack opaque plastic (unlike the other colored lacquer sprays by Tamiya), but occasionally does frost clear plastic: Not quite a substitute for Future in that case...

The only difficulty is getting, with the spray can, an even, fully wet coat without getting runs, but you can sometimes sop off the runs with minimal trouble if they happen...

Remember, if you fear it is too thick as you spray on the model, that it shrinks to an incredible extent after fully curing, at least on the first coat: The runs are a bigger trouble than putting too much of this gloss on the first coat (puttied areas might need a second coat if they are not polished)... The panel lines sometimes disappear upon spraying when you spray enough to avoid the "orange peel" effect: The trick is to keep moving to avoid runs, and not worry about swamped detail: It will come back later with a vengeance...

Note that flat surfaces like the wings must be kept at a very slightly diving angle, so that the clear does not poodle thicker on the trailing edges but at the leading edges, where the curvature will nullify the "poodling" effect...

Another thing is to spray at night, as with this gloss you will notice the night air is much cleaner because the sunlight is not lifting the dust into the air by heating up surfaces... This gloss does sand very well when fully cured, so don't worry about trapped particles, but keep the impurities to a minimum, as sanding will clog the detail quickly if you do it on a large surface at once...

Gaston

P.S. Future itself is not as suitable for that purpose, as it doesn't shrink as much, and is not anywhere near as tough or sandable, since it tends to peel on sanding.

Does it come in a bottle? I don't airbrush (breathing difficulties)...

that's the whole point of using a lacquer is the advantages you get from it being chemically hot. of course with plastic in the mix, that means you have to be cautious lest it become too hot and etch the plastic too much.

And primer is DESIGNED to be porous so that paints that do not bind as strongly to plastic (or whatever you are painting) can bind well to the porous surface of the primer and use the better adhesion properties of the primer to the lower surface. Thus a primer, pretty much by definition, is an intermediary layer that improves the adhesion of the top coat - NOT a 'weak' layer between the plastic and your top coat mucking things up for you. if it is behaving in the latter fashion, then you are not using a proper primer for the situation at hand or shouldn't be using the primer at all in that situation.

If your finishing layer of paint has strong adhesion properties on its own (say it is also a spray lacquer), then there is no point to using primer anyway, unless you do specifically want the primer's tendency to fill small cracks and whatnot.

while i do appreciate the fact that lack of pigments in the clear coat allows a thinner layer, the clear coat probably would not allow my aging eyes to see the seam flaws i normally rely on a primer coat to reveal to me.

future doesn't do the job because it is essentially clear acrylic enamel, which does not have good adhesion properties on plastic (especially compared to lacquers) since it cannot etch into the top layer of the plastic.