Airbrush question

[Guest]

Hi.

I've just started on a Revell Panzerhaubitze 2000, and the thing is huge compared to my first attempts, and the idea of brush painting is very daunting. I've primered it with an aerosol, and the result is very good. So i think my next purchase will have to be an airbrush and compressor.

I appreciate that buying the best may be cheaper in the long run, but can i get a good kit for about £150? Its my birthday soon (i laugh in the face of middle agedness!!) and the wonderful Natalie is going to treat me to my first airbrush.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

[yak face]

hi and welcome to the forum. You should be able to get a good set up for £150 , but if you want a great starter set up for about £80-90 , take a look at the review section.John has done a review on a comp he bought (in fact quite a few members have bought this one,and are very impressed) You can get it as a set too combined with a couple of dual action airbrushes , and heres the good bit - scale-model members get a 10% discount too!! hope this helps , cheers tony

[Guest]

I bought this one before christmas and for the price it does a very good job. They also do more expensive set ups just look around their ebay shop.Delivery was also very good.The reason i chose this one was because if i found air-brushing wasn,t for me then i hadn,t wasted 100's ? of pounds

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Computers.Don't you love them.Bring back the two cans and a piece of string method.At least you could see who was on the line..

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[Guest]

Thanks Dingbat.

So is airbrushing easier/better for you? Was it easy to get used to?

[Guest]

I wouldn't say it was/ is easy you need to practice. I am sure someone will back me up on this when i say practice makes perfect (to a degree). But the results i find are better. It all comes down to your own choice of finish. I'm still a bit of a novice but with an air brush i find the finish more even and it is easier to build up more thinner coats. But one piece of advice i can give you is an air brush is not essental to produce good models.

[Guest]

Thanks again. I noticed that the sprayed primer kept the detail very sharp, whereas it seems to soften with brush painting. I guess that this is because the paint is thicker with brush painting.

[Guest]

With the air brush if you get one of the duel action brushes, with practice you can control both the amounts of paint/air mixes so you can either give it a fine dusting or a thicker coat which ever you need.

[Guest]

i'm not that good at multi tasking, but i know what you mean. I was looking at a Mig production brush. Has anybody tried them?

[Guest]

If this had been asked on any other forum, it would have possibly opend a can of worms and become very 'interesting'.

There are two camps on here, the air brushers and the hairy brushers. For me, the air brush has liberated my modeling. Dingbat is right, practice moves towards perfection. However. The hairy brushers on here produce paint jobs that I can only marvel at. It is much a personal thing. None is better than the other, but one of them may be better for you.

My early, November/December 2009 when I started, aircraft kits are terrible compared to what I can do now simply because I could not master brush painting with acrylics, my prefered paint. This isn't down to anything but me. I well remember building a superb little Airfix Sea Harrier which I primed with a rattle can and it looked great. By the time I had finish painted it by brush it was a mess. Not the kits fault, nor the brush or the paint, it was down to me. As you say, airbrushing is such a thin layer of paint, sharp detail stays sharp. But I have seen superb detail on brushed work to.

Airbrushing does not guarantee good work and it brings it's own problems. For example, when I started I wanted to stick with Humbrol Acrylics as I could buy them locally and there is a reasonable colour range. I now never use them as I had too many blockages. Since using Tamiya and Vallejo, blockages are a thing of the past. Also, care of equipment is very important. Any brush, air or hairy needs cleaning properly and it needs respecting if you want it to give you the best results.

As a final point, hairy brushers can get away without an airbrush, air brushers will always need hairy brushes.

[Ian M]

A low(er) priced air brush well worth looking into are Sparmax. They have been producing AB's for ages for other "big" names, but have now started selling their own.

I have a Badger Anthem and a Sparmax 2. The Sparmax gets used rather alot more than the Anthem. The sparmax cost about half the price of the Badger. Dont get the wronge idea, Both are pretty good (more than can be said for the idiot using them). Great value for the money.

If you are worried about the start up costs, I would suggest a cheaper AB BUT NOT THE CHEAPEST YOU CAN FIND. Did that nmy self and the really cheap AB was total c##p and it put me right off the idea, and It got thrown in the back of the draw.

If you want to avoid the cost of a compressor, knick the spare wheel out of the wifes car and use that. Just remember to pump it up really hard.

[John]

Like Tony said I did a review of the spraymaster compressor last month, you can find that here well worth the money, as for airbrushes, I bought a cheap one from ebay for £25 and I thought it was ok but airbrushes.com sent me a Iwata Revolution CR to review which I'm working on at the moment, so far it's defiantly a case of you get what you pay for, the double action control is much more precise and also seems a lot easier to clean, I've yet to give it a full test but so far it's worth the money, there is also be 10% of airbrushes.com on most their products, if you create an account and answer 5 simple questions.