Airbrushing Kits for turned work

[Paul Hannaby]

I use single action siphon feed airbrushes for spraying spirit dyes and for what you might call "blanket coverage" they are ideal. The ones I currently have cost me around £7 each and the oldest one is nearly 20 years old and still working! The others are much newer but of the same basic type. The advantage of these is the ability to have a different bottle for each colour and switching when needed. I bought some extra bottles when I bough the airbrush and have enough to have one for each colour I use and a few spares just in case.

I also have a couple of dual action gravity feed airbrushes for spraying various acrylic paints. One has a 0.2mm needle which is fine for airbrush paints such as Golden and Com-Art. The other has a 0.5mm needle which is better for the thicker paints such as those by Chestnut, Createx etc. Unless you are planning on painting fine detail, you don't need to break the bank when buying airbrushes. Check out this website for some reasonably priced kit. I have no connection, I'm just another customer.

For compressors, I used to use my big workshop compressor which worked fine but got fed up with lugging it around when I did demos so I bought a much more portable airbrush compressor (which is much quieter!) and now use that one instead.

 

[Lonsdale73]

It's here! I've got a longer air hose, cleaning pot. cleaning accessories, cleaning solution, inline trap, an Abest brush and a selection of Vallejo Model Air Acrylic paints to come. Yjought the Abest was a barfain till I visited the site Paul linked to. Slight compensation for the unwanted news that my lathe won't be returned to me this week after all as they're still waiting on new parts. It has now been in Record Power's workshop longer than it has in mine!

 

[AES]

Great! Looks good. (Do you see the moisture drain - little brass thumb wheel under the tank - against the blue airbrush box in your pic)? Please remember to relieve all pressure in tank after use, then open that drain valve, then leave it open until next use (sorry, Granny and eggs and all that)!

Glad you've got cleaning kit n fluids & all that, plus, I also see a brush holder in your pic. Excellent. I also suspect you may find that glass "paint" jar very useful (I do anyway) and you may well want to buy more to save extra mixed/thinned colours (or whatever it is you'll be spraying).

I think you said earlier that the whole kit was a touch over a hundred quid??? If so excellent value for money (against my Badger 1970s & 80s prices anyway).

You "only" need to start practice exercises now (and with still no lathe, no excuses not to, eh)?

Let us know how it goes, and enjoy your new kit mate.

 

[Lonsdale73]

Please remember to relieve all pressure in tank after use, then open that drain valve, then leave it open until next use

I remembered that bit, forgot to turn it off first so it kicked in again. 3L tank filled up in no time, certainly under a minute. It was a whopping £93 for the compressor, two air brushes (one gravity, one siphon), hose and the brush holder. Or about half the price of a Badger/Iwata/Harder & Steenback.