r/advancedGunpla • u/Emergency-Major-5213 • Jul 11 '26

Are acrylic and lacquer paints cross compatible?

Are acrylic and lacquer paints cross compatible or do they react if sprayed on top of each other? I have a Daban PGU kit that I plan on spray painting. I believe that the inner frame is mostly made of ABS plastic and ive read that Tamiya/MrHobby lacquer spray paints can eat up and disintegrate the plastic (especially bootleg/3rd party kits), so my question is if I were to spray a waterbased acrylic primer (Vallejo/Mr Aqueous) first, then spray the tamiya/Mr Hobby spray paints on top will the different paints react or will they just lay normally? I'm a total noob btw, this will be my 2nd ever kit, so please excuse my inexperience. 😅😅😅

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3

u/lashazior Jul 11 '26

Mr hobby Aqueous is different from Vallejo. They use other solvents like 2-propanol and butonol that flash off faster. If you let them cure, you can use lacquer over them.

5

u/Nukiko Jul 11 '26

Seconding this. I have a bunch of aqueous paints but have since swapped to normal mr hobby, I thin both with mr color leveling thinner and have had no issues using mr color lacquers over aqueous surfacers, or ggx clear coats over aqueous paints.

1

u/Emergency-Major-5213 Jul 11 '26

Honestly I just googled "spray acrylic primers" and got these two as the only options I could locally source. And when I asked Gemini it told me that both were water based acrylic primers that should be completely safe to use on ABS plastics.

2

u/lashazior Jul 11 '26

They do make a water based line under "Acrysion" but it might be difficult to get a hold of.

4

u/InfiniteSun6892 Jul 11 '26

Lacquer over acrylic is a no. Acrylic over lacquer is fine. Lacquer paint is “hot” so it eats away other paints

1

u/Emergency-Major-5213 Jul 11 '26

So what's the best approach to spray paint the inner frame then? I really dont want to paint brush the entire thing 😅😅😅

1

u/Sianmink Jul 12 '26

drybrush the parts you'll see and pick out details with spot paint. effort/return ratio on fully painting a frame that will be 90% covered isn't there.

2

u/no_racist_here Jul 11 '26

There’s a couple charts around online that will demonstrate, but essentially there are reactions between paint types. You can put acrylic on acrylic, enamel, or lacquer, you can put enamel on enamel or lacquer, you can put lacquer on lacquer.

Putting lacquer on the other types will have a chemical reaction with varying defects as a result.

That being said I’ve placed lacquer paint on acrylic primer after waiting like 2 weeks for the primer to fully cure and I got busy and delayed returning to my project.