Testing Agama's products

For those whom ever been at any model show in the Czech Republic or Slovakia, the Agama brand may sound familiar. This company based in the Czech Republic, and they making a wide range of products for modelers, like paints, pigment powders, brushes, etc.

The company has offered some of their products for testing, in this article I'll test their paints, decal setting liquids and pigment powders.

At first I start with the paints. Agama makes a wide range of colours, and they distribute them in 3 different types. They producing Enamel (1st picture), Water based (Acrylic) (2nd picture) and Spirituous based (3rd picture) paints, with of course their appropriate thinners.

They have different Metal pastes ( 4th picture), and Theme paint sets, in which there are two or three 3 ml (about 0.1 oz )small paint bottles (as you can see on the 2nd picture). I've got a 4 colour wide paint set, which can be used for German AFV's. The set contains these colours: sand yellow, red brown, medium green and a caterpillar metallic colour. Because of the small amount of the paints, these set is ideal for one 1/72 scaled AFV kit.

They offering a Decal media set (5th picture) too, which is consist of 3 bottles. These bottles are produced in separately too, so if you run out one of them, you can buy only the required bottle, and not the whole media set.

Agama producing pigment powders too, what they called as Patinator (6th picture).

Before the beginning of the testing process, I thought that I'll try all the paints with brush and airbrush too, in this way it will turns out, that the brush painters could use these colours as an alternative or not.

Agama's colour range is very wide, an they labeling them with a very smart marking system. Every label has a country character, a colour number and a type character. The colours can be identified easily with Agama's group key table (see below). An example: from the N24 M marking you can read out these things with the help of the Group key: N- a German color, 24 - according to the table from N21 to N25 there are military vehicle colours what used in the WWII, M shows that this color is Matt. It turns out that the N24M sand yellow is ideal for painting german WWII. AFV's.

The table:

I've painted all colors on a 1/72 scaled AFV's body, with brush, and airbrush too (7th and 8th picture). The colors in the 3ml bottles must be thinned before airbrushing them, but the others don't. I was especially courious about the yellow color's covering, because the models plastic are dark green, and without a base coat, its hard to apply light colors. For my suprise, with airbrush, the yellow covered the surface almost perfectly in one layer, in practice, there should be enough 2 layers without a base coat! I tried it with brush too, here, there must be at least 2 or 3 layers for a perfect covering (without base cote!).

The Enamel colors are like the standard enamels, however they dryies a little bit slower than the Humbrol or the Revell colors. The other paints can be painted easily with brush or airbush, even in 1 layer, and their thinners works just fine.

The painting of the metal pastes can be made with brush, or with it's thinner with airbursh. Because we didn't got this thinner, I painted it with brush. Later I bought a metal thinner, so I can say that with it's thinner, the pastes can be easily painted by brush and airbrush, the painted surface Won't be laced, and after the polishing it's finish will be more shiny.(see 9th and 10th picture)
Important to notice that after the painting and polishing, the surface is very sensitive to touches, so if you use agama metal pastes, paint them last on to your model, and be careful, don't touch the painted surfaces.

I can't say any new things about the pigment powders, maybe that Agama's pigments are better (in my opinion) then CMK's "stardust".

The 3 piece decal setting media set was a bit of a mistery for me at the beginning, because usualy these sets contains only 2 bottles (1 bottle before applying, 1 after) Later I learned, that there are two bottles to use before setting the decals, where the first type doesn't work, you can use the second type. During the decaling process, the liquids worked fine, I had only one problem with a Roden Lozenge Decal, but these decals were half millimeter thick.
Important, that after you set the decals, the residues of the liquid must be cleaned, because after it dryies, its virtually impossible to clean off.

My conclusions are:
The paints are very good, and easy to use, with airbrush the light colors covers the surface in 1 or maximum 2 layers. The enamel colors are equaly good, however I recommend the acril paints because the enamel colors drying slowly. I'd like to emphasize their smart color marking system, with it's help you can easily buy new paints.

The metal pastes are interesting alternatives on small surfaces, for example: you can make magnificent loooking engines with them, but I don't recommend to use them on bare metal aircrafts, because the paints are too sensitive to touch.

The pigment powders are easy to use, and I liked them very much.

The decal setting liquids works fine, and they are good, it's worthy to have.

Where can I buy Agama products?
In modelshops in Slovakia and the Czech Republic, at modelcontests, or you can order them from many online modelshops.

We'd like to thank to AGAMA for providing these review samples!

© Radics Péter 
2007.04.21.