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I have access to a Compressor and Airbrush. However the airbrush is too fine for basecoating tanks, rather than buying Cans of paint/basecoat I want to use all my citadel paints. Has anyone experimented with the GW Spray Gun attached through a reducer to a Compressor? Did it work and if so what connections / air hoses did you use?

get a wider spread needle for your airbrush. The citadel spray gun is crap.

secondly this is in the wrong forum.

Huh Painting and modelling, this is relevant to painting and modelling isn't it! D'oh its the tutorials section

Could a MOD move this to the correct place Sorry.

What is too fine? Even very small tip brushes can create a wide stream of paint... and yeah the GW thing is crap.

Maybe it was me, but the stream from the Airbursh was far too small and concentrated. I was after more of a controlled spray 1 - 1.5" wide I was using my friends Airbrush so i didn't want to fiddle too much, it just took a very long time to base coat a Landraider. I think a slightly bigger Air brush might be a better option.

Airbrushes don't come in sizes. Needles do. If you have a decent dual action there should be a way to change how far back the needle pulls which allows more paint through at a time. There are also fan tips that you can get for certain brushes that are perfect for tanks.

So:
bigger needle
fan tip
adjust the pull back on your brush

You are much better off with a cheapy dual-action, gravity feed like the Masters g23 that has a 0.3mm tip or the PS900 that has a 0.2mm tip... or slightly better would be a Paasche Talon or an Iwata Evolution.

a paasche talon is far from cheap and far from slightly better than cheap. Then again I'm biased to my pretty little orange airbrush.

I second what Aerethan is saying. A quality airbrush will do wonders. The citadel gun, does not fall into this catagorey.

To answer you orginal question though. If your aircompresor has a regulator that allows you to drop your pressure to between 20 - 30 psi and you get the appropirate air line reducer the Citadel gun will run from a normal air compressor.

my $10 Harbor Freight airbrush is better than the gw gun.

I personally spray at 40psi but a lower may be better for cheaper brushes.

No offense meant to the Talon lol... it is cheap(er) priced for a name brand AB.

And lower than 40psi may be better for _any_ AB not just cheaper brushes. The very best AB's imo, Harder&Steenbeck recommend using 15 or less psi.

Catyrpelius wrote:If your aircompresor has a regulator that allows you to drop your pressure to between 20 - 30 psi and you get the appropirate air line reducer the Citadel gun will run from a normal air compressor.

Brilliant me and my mate, Matt have found the appropriate reducer and air hose. We are going to use the GW Spray gun (one i picked up years ago) with Citadel Foundation paints (slightly watered down) to do fast Base coating and then we can use the airbrush for washes and other bits and bobs. Cheers for the advice, I will be investing in an AB so it is good to have advice such as investing in a Dual action with multiple needles.

My talon brush I got from an ebay store in san diego for $80ish and it included 3 different needles. IMO anything besides a paasche talon(or other brand equivalent)or H&S is a waste of money.

Well, I've got a decent dual-action airbrush for the fine work and I've got the GW spray gun for base coating. i think it works decent enough. I usually mix my basecoats with foundation paints as a base, thinned down with thinner and perhaps some other paint for a different shade. The think I like about it is it's absolute simplicity, no moving parts. So you can spray longer without fear of drying paint clogging up your mechanism. And it's also taken apart easily in case you need to give it a decent cleaning.

oh, and the hose attachment happens to be the exact same size as my airbrush.