Ask TGN: using an airbrush
Not really asked by any one person is particular but there have been many comments about this so perhaps we can ask a general question regarding what sort of airbrush is good for a beginner to use and what is an airbrush best at painting?
Clean-up is 50% of airbrushing. For each hour I spend airbrushing I generally spend an hour prepping or cleaning the airbrush, paint bottles, and workspace. That said, the hour spent airbrushing would normally be days spent painting with a brush!
For that reason, I own a Testors Aztek A4308 kit with a compressor. It’s a solid beginners setup. Each needle tip is packed in a screw-in plastic housing, which makes cleaning simple. Higher-end brushes have full disassembly, which means they can be cleaned better, but they are higher maintenance as well. The downside is that this airbrush won’t provide the ultra fine spray that graphic designers can achieve. I feel that the dual-action is required for a mini painter. That means both the amount of paint and the air flow can be controlled by the trigger. This airbrush is great for base coating models, designs on vehicles, and even a first layer of batch-highlighting on infantry. It retails for $100 and will last for years, just be sure to give it excellent cleaning care!
I’ve used this model for enough years now that I want to upgrade to an Iwata Custom Micron CM-C Plus. It’s a top of the line brush that retails for about $400. That $300 difference is buying some fine detail and the ability to clean out paint jams by full disassembly. But the upkeep is going to go up as well! I will continue to use the Aztek for basecoating, because the clean-up is simpler.
My compressor is very basic. I think it’s a Badger. Satisfactory overall. I never used air cans, mostly because I don’t like discardably products in general.
Since I think my query in another TGN topic was part of the inspiration for this “Ask TGN” I’ll reiterate a couple of my questions:
First, the wee bit of background: I’m not a painter of vast armies - I paint maybe 2-3 large models each year, and perhaps the occasional other item (e.g. this fella has been sitting on my desk daring me to paint him for a year now). I also paint in the fine arts sense, and if I could bring an airbrush into my toolset for arty painting that’d be cool too.
1) Given that I’d use it only a few times in a year, I’d prefer to not fork out for a compressor. However, my father always tells me compressed air cans are no good (though he hasn’t used his old airbrush for 20 years, so technology might have come along some). Is it worth getting a brush without a compressor if you expect good results?
2) The Mrs. is strongly opposed to unnecessary noise (she detests the roar of the fans in my gaming PC ;) ), and I have no sense of how loud a compressor is, whether it has to be running constantly while you’re doing the airbrushing, or anything along those lines. Anything y’all could tell me to enlighten me would be helpful.
3) What does a dual-action brush add to the functionality?
If you dont want a compressor you might want to look into getting a small tank from a welding supply store and just loading it up with compressed air. You’d need atleast a regulator - and youd need expertise from someone who knows more then me.
Double action give you much much more control - unless you plan on masking and brush painting that bust you need a double.
One of the local painters here has his compressor in a lined box and says that the noise from it is next to nothing when the box is closed off.
The noise from a hobby compressor is signifigant, just enough that you’d have to raise your voice to talk over it. Perhaps like a home sewing machine.
One of the local painters here has his compressor in a lined box and says that the noise from it is next to nothing when the box is closed off.
That’s a great idea! It’s kind of ugly too. :)
The only problem I can see is that it gets warm from the motor. The box would need to vent that heat somehow, but that lets the noise out too.
Iwata makes a pretty quiet compressor. The SmarJet I believe it is called. Anyway, the first airbrush I bought was a plastic Testor’s siphon feed complete with small compressor. It almost made me swear off of trying to airbrush anything. It constantly clogged and spat and sputtered despite my best efforts. I bought an Iwata Revolution double-action gravity fed brush and a moisture filter to connect to my small shop compressor and it works like a champ and is easy to use.
Well as a regular air brush user, Id like to input a few things. As for air brush’s them selves I cannot reccomend anything other than a brush made by Iwata. They make the best airbrushes in the work. I use a HP-C Plus top mount siphon cup brush to do all sorts of work from spray priming, to coating to sealing. Its a wonderful tool that will last you a lifetime if you take care of it.
I would recommend a compressor with a reserve tank so it doesn’t run that much and good gauges and air/water line filters to remove moisture.
If you don’t wish to use a compressor, a small bottle of compressed CO2 bought from a welding supply store with a gauge set up will last a very long time and provide you with silent clean dry propellant.
How much do the bottles last and what do they typically cost?
My advice to everyone who asks me about Airbrushing is firstly buy a decent compressor. I have bought two rubbish ones since i started through lack of knowledge, the first bounced around like a kangeroo and the second does not have enough grunt to properly power all my airbrushes.
Something like this is fairly inexpensive and quiet, http://www.wonderlandmodels.com/Master-Class-Compressor-productx365444.html and also has a small airtank which it charges. Having an airtank mean you do not get pulses of air when spraying, a problem with straight compressors.
As for brushes my favourite right now is this Aztek http://www.wonderlandmodels.com/Metal-Airbrush-Set-productx59971.html purely because i find it simple to clean and precise with the control i need, mainly for 15mm tanks at the moment. A big plus for me is that i can get spares for it easily at the LHS.
http://wigan-wargames.co.uk/cgpics/germans/ferdinands1.jpg
http://wigan-wargames.co.uk/cgpics/germans/kingtigers5.jpg
Along with this i would say to a starter go with what you can afford when buying an airbrush but PLEASE PLEASE make sure its a double action airbrush as this allows you to control the airflow to the paint, and in basic terms the cone of paint that comes out the end of the brush. A single action allows you hardly any control and you basically end up with a fancy spraygun.
One cheap thing you can do is buy “copies” of Iwata airbrushes off ebay, along with cleaning stations and air hoses, etc. I have bought one off this guy in the past and it been okay, but i am told its not as good as the real thing, and it still does not beat the Aztek for me.
The Copy
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Spraymaster-High-Detail-Precision-Gravity-Feed-Airbrush_W0QQitemZ300230804778QQihZ020QQcategoryZ28111QQtcZphotoQQcmdZViewItem
The real thing
http://www.iwata-medea.com/products/airbrush/micron/cmcplus_info.jsp
Unfortunately the real thing is about £400 and the copy is £30.
So get a decent compressor first, you are wasting your time and money with cans of compressed air, then look at getting a brush, a cheap one to learn is good.
About three months ago my friend set himself up with the compressor and copy brush shown above. After he had finished buying that hoses, paint, thinners and cleaners he had little change from £250.
Getting into airbrushing is a big chunk of cash so think hard about how much you will actually get out of it before you jump in. they take time to learn how to use, take alot of time to clean properly and also need a stream of consumables (cleaners/paint/thinners) to run. That said if you can get your head around it does save some time and is an excellent tool to have.
If you have spent the cash though and don’t like it, the second hand market particularly on ebay is quiet boyant so you could get most if not all of your money back.
I can’t really answer the question about which brush is best for a beginner, since, when I was a beginner, I bought the best brush I could afford at the time - a Paasche double-action machine that set me back $300 25 years ago. I still use it and it’s working as faultlessly now as it did then.
I’ve never used a single action brush because it seemed like an unnecessary step backward.
Like many people, I started off using cans of compressed air (I couldn’t afford a compressor at the time), but quickly found them to be very poor performers - they get icy cold during use and lose their pressure, plus there’s no way of trapping moisture. So I saved up and bought a compressor with a moisture trap and never looked back.
I use the airbrush for a number of tasks in this hobby:
- for achieving smooth blends of colour on large surfaces such as river beds, e.g. blending from sandy colours out to greenish browns or blues.
- for applying camouflage patterns on larger scale models
- for applying a thin overall covering of pale colour to achieve a faded look of ‘distance’ (a weathering technique)
- for stencilling
Each of these are beyond my skills to achieve with a brush and so the airbrush is an invaluable part of my hobby toolkit.
I saw that GW’s now making a simple spraybrush using cans of compressed propellant. Might be a cheaper way to learn if it’s for you or not.
It seems that it might be easier to get a cheap dual action brush online or locally and test that way
Well, I’m seeing now that the obvious plan is to get a dual-action brush and some propellant, and upgrade to a compressor if I feel the propellant is cruddy.
This is intriguing though (from Dragonforge):
“If you don’t wish to use a compressor, a small bottle of compressed CO2 bought from a welding supply store with a gauge set up will last a very long time and provide you with silent clean dry propellant.”
I need to know more! ;)
If you dont want a compressor you might want to look into getting a small tank from a welding supply store and just loading it up with compressed air. You’d need atleast a regulator - and youd need expertise from someone who knows more then me.
That’s exactly what I use. The tank is a 11 gallon Husky from the Home Depot, the moisture trap/pressure regulator is the only one they had at Sears, the tire compressor is an old thing found in a garage. It cost me about 80 USD. Once filled up (about 20min with the noisy compressor), I have easily 3-4 hours of completely noiseless painting time. And if I don’t use it all, the air stays in the tank for as long as needed.
An actual airbrush compressor is certainly a more convenient option from many point of views, but no matter what compressor you get it will always be much more expensive and noisier during work than a tank option. Another advantage to the tank is that if you ever decide to invest in a compressor, the tank can be connected to it.
On use:
An airbrush is great for basecoating and for camouflage, as well as painting larger models. It’s also great for weathering effects and gradients (shading). You’ll find more uses than you thought of once you start using it.
On buying:
Forget the propellant cans. They will not deliver a constant pressure. A friend of mine also experienced problems with cans freezing and had to keep them in a bucket of warm water during use. Get a good, silent compressor with an air tank, a moisture trap and a regulator.
Concering airbrushes, invest in quality. Some people love Aztek, others hate them. Iwata is really expensive. I want to get a Harder & Steenbeek Evolution, have read only good things about it, but I don’t know it that’s available in the US. Costs about 140 euros with 0.2mm and 0.4mm nozzles. I currently use a cheaper one, and even though it has a fine nozzle, the spray pattern is not clean enough to paint really thin lines.
Iwata airbrushes and compressors are both superb.
Iwata copy airbrushes are pretty much $^!£, there is a reason they are cheap after all.
You can run the iwata compressors i your house, my office is next to the children’s bedroom and its never woken them up or even disturbed them, its easy to talk over it and i usually have some chill music playing at the same time, so loud it is not.
Starting to airbrush is HARD, it is a very steep learning curve with a vast array of things that can go potentially awry. The trick is being able to identify which particular “thing” is causing your particular problem that day/hour/minute. Any method for reducing the number of things that can go wrong is therefore advantageous.
Unfortunately that almost always involves more expenditure: a good airbrush over a copy one, a dual action over a single action, a compressor over a can of air.
If (big IF) you have an airbrush expert (or even competent) with you then you can learn with the cheapest bits of $^!£ out there, as the expert can tell you what you are doing wrong and compensate for it. You will always, however, soon reach the limit of your cheap equipment at which point your ability to do X is impossible to achieve due to your kit.
Therefore one could say that buying good equipment up front will save you long-term problems and make learning easier. That is true, however it is also true to say that around 90% of people who buy an airbrush never use it beyond te first week (by which time they are so frustrated by it all that they never airbrush again). So, find a friend, colleague or club where you can try airbrushing and get hints and help before buying, even better if you can get a loan…and seriously consider going on a half day or full day course BEFORE buying. It may well save you a lot of money in the long term.
After you have got your airbrush the most common problem is that your airbrush will go from being easy to use and excellent results to diabolical in both departments within about 2-3 days of use. This is the part where a lot of people give it up, which is a shame as the thing that is causing the problem is simply cleaning.
Learning how to clean your airbrush AND actually cleaning it properly, regularly and religiously, is one thing you MUST be prepared for and MUST do, otherwise don’t even consider airbrushes at all. 90%+ of cases where people say “It worked fine to start with then……” means they haven’t cleaned it properly.
Often they sell it for cheap, thinking it is broken, then you get it as a bargain on ebay, clean it up and have a perfect airbrush.
With an airbrush you will clean, clean, clean, clean and clean some more. Every time you use it, between paints.. i.e. all the time. If you don’t it will inevitably stop working (properly or at all).
This is where The Great Myth gets destroyed “An airbrush will save me time!”.
No, it won’t. At least not until you are expert with it, until that time it will take you longer to airbrush something than to just paint it as normal.
In summary:
Get a loan brush if you can for a trial.
Try a course (never wasted experience I hasten to add).
Buy the best you can afford.
Don’t buy copies.
Go Dual-action (unless you have a specific reason not to)
Get a good silent compressor if you can afford it.
When it stops working ask an expert how to clean it properly – or go on one of the courses you didn’t go on right at the start (Where they will have taught you how to clean it!). _
The cost of a CO2 set up is about $90.00 for a empty 10 lb tank and $125.00-$140.00 plus a CO2 regulator for air brushes about $60.00 plus the price of filling the tank.
There many sources for getting tanks and regulators. A full 20 pound tank could last 6-12 months of fairly heavy use. A refill costs about $20.00.
So yes not cheap, about the price of a good compressor but it is truely silent and dry.
The smaller 10 pound tanks are portable to take to shows and such.
Thank you dragonforge - I knew I had seen similar mentions in some of the modeling magazines I skim (which are also a good source of info on techniques and tricks)
I’m assuming this topic is dead now, but I wanted to say that, thanks to y’all’s advice I picked up this for myself today: http://www.chicagoairbrushsupply.com/iwdemokit.html
Maybe I’ll actually get that bust painted this year ;)