M o d e l W a r s h i p s . c o m Lifecolor Naval Paints Review

Lifecolor Naval Paints Review

Reviewed November 2018
by Devin Poore

The review samples: Lifecolor have released several sets of navy-specific paints in recent years. Here's the German Navy Sets 1 & 2: Kriegsmarine German Navy WWII “Surface Vessels” Set 1: Hellgrau Silbergrau DKM 50 Dunkelgrau DKM 51 Hellgrau DKM 50 var. Mittelgrau DKM 51 var. Dunkelgrau Rot 5 Schiffsbodenfarbe Kriegsmarine German Navy WWII “U-Boot and Surface Vessels” Set 2: DKM 23 Schiffsbodenfarbe III Grau Schlickgrau 58 Blaugrau 58-1 Dunkelgrau 52 Dunkelgrau 53 Terrfirnis TF 99 Faded (I apologize for any misspellings of those German names. High school German class was a LONG time ago!)
What they are:
Life Color paints are an acrylic paint. The closest contemporary I can come up with is the Vallejo Model Air line. They have very low odor, with just the slightest scent of ammonia.
How they perform:
For my test, I sprayed several samples with a Grex airbrush, shooting around 30psi and 10psi, onto a sheet of styrene primed with Badger’s Stynylrez acrylic white primer. These paints need no thinning before airbrushing. They flow easily, no spitting, and dry evenly. Humidity was very high the day I sprayed these, and the drying time was slow as a result. Within 10 minutes, however, they’d dried to an even matt finish, and were ready to handle within 30 minutes. Brush painting works, but as the paints work well out of the bottle in the airbrush, they are a bit thin on the bristles. Two or three thin coats give a nice opaque finish. Adhesion is great over the primer. After a dry time of 3 hours I stuck a strip of Tamiya masking tape across the color samples – really pressed it in with a lot of pressure -- let it set 5 minutes, then ripped it off like a Band-Aid. No paint pulled from the plastic. Airbrush and bristle brush clean-up was easily done with the Vallejo/Medea/Simple Green cleaners that I have on hand for acrylics. No problems encountered.

Verdict
: I work as a model maker for my day-job, for which we sometimes use Lifecolor, so I wasn’t surprised by any of the brush painting or airbrushing results. These paints are very easy to use and give great results. The colors are either spot-on or close enough. They work wonderfully out of the bottle for airbrushing. For minor touch-ups, you can definitely brush paint them, but if you’re looking to brush paint an entire model, you’re going to have to be patient and plan on several coats to get full coverage. Based upon the performance and the close matches with the Snyder and Short paint chips, I’m looking forward to picking up their US Navy WWII sets for my own use. Overall, highly recommended.