by blw » Mon Mar 09, 2015 11:00 am
marijn van gils wrote:one tip for airbrushing: the most common beginner mistake is to under-thin the paint and use very high pressure, so do the opposite: thin very much and use low pressure.
This is incredibly true. After reading for thirty years "how" to do airbrushing, I saw a guy from Vallejo doing what looked like
impossible things with an airbrush at a show. Right in front of me. I asked a lot of questions and learned a lot.
I've switched from 20-25 psi to 11-12psi and somewhat less distance from nozzle to model, and it's amazing how much better control there is. (I'm using my wife's 29-year-old Iwata, by the way.)
I also found that the lower pressure and shorter spray distance reduced paint consumption by a stunning amount, which is no surprise when one considers just how much overspray the traditional techniques create. I'd guess that somewhere between a third and a half of the paint I used to use ended up somewhere other than on the model!
I will likely get a new airbrush sometime as parts for our old one are getting hard to find. We both like the Iwata enough that I'm sure we'll get another Iwata. However, in the past I've used Badger and Paasche airbrushes - in fact, I still own and use a Paasche H, which I can also recommend. It's a single-action brush, which I preferred in the high-pressure days, since I couldn't really control the paint very well. Now with the much lower air pressure, a dual-action brush seems much, much handier. I mostly use the Paasche for relatively large areas such as 1/350 hulls and model railroading stuff that's 1/87. The Badgers are OK; they're all single-action as far as I know. Some of the Badgers are not too expensive, either.
[quote="marijn van gils"]one tip for airbrushing: the most common beginner mistake is to under-thin the paint and use very high pressure, so do the opposite: thin very much and use low pressure. [/quote]
This is incredibly true. After reading for thirty years "how" to do airbrushing, I saw a guy from Vallejo doing what looked like [b]impossible[/b] things with an airbrush at a show. Right in front of me. I asked a lot of questions and learned a lot.
I've switched from 20-25 psi to 11-12psi and somewhat less distance from nozzle to model, and it's amazing how much better control there is. (I'm using my wife's 29-year-old Iwata, by the way.)
I also found that the lower pressure and shorter spray distance reduced paint consumption by a stunning amount, which is no surprise when one considers just how much overspray the traditional techniques create. I'd guess that somewhere between a third and a half of the paint I used to use ended up somewhere other than on the model!
I will likely get a new airbrush sometime as parts for our old one are getting hard to find. We both like the Iwata enough that I'm sure we'll get another Iwata. However, in the past I've used Badger and Paasche airbrushes - in fact, I still own and use a Paasche H, which I can also recommend. It's a single-action brush, which I preferred in the high-pressure days, since I couldn't really control the paint very well. Now with the much lower air pressure, a dual-action brush seems much, much handier. I mostly use the Paasche for relatively large areas such as 1/350 hulls and model railroading stuff that's 1/87. The Badgers are OK; they're all single-action as far as I know. Some of the Badgers are not too expensive, either.