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I recently got the "great idea" to use my airbrush to apply a figure-wide wash. I thought it was brilliant & it appeared to work brilliantly. HOWEVER I had major problems with the needle getting fouled after a fairly short period of time (I was painting 20 figures at a go so it was a decent period of spraying... still, with properly thinned paints I typically have no problems at all). I cleaned the brush thoroughly until it was spraying (windex) cleanly. Then later when I tried to finish the last few figures, I once again had major fouling problems and had to spend quite a lot of time re-cleaning the brush.

I was wondering if anyone else has tried to use their airbrush for applying washes (I was using GW's Gryphone Sepia) and had similar issues. My thought was that I either accidentally added a dried flake to the pot which got lodged in the pin (though you would think the first cleaning would have eliminated any debris), or perhaps the was is a bit different in form than thinned paint and was somehow drying on the fine parts during the spraying process??

Not sure... anyone?

Washes should be fine going through an airbrush. Perhaps your compressor was starting to lose pressure due to being on too long?

I'd been spraying other layers for longer earlier on in the process with no problems, and I do keep a close eye on my pressure. Maybe the wash just had some flakes floating around in it so that no matter when I loaded it I was putting particulates into the system...

More likely. I find browns and reds seem to have coarser pigment than other colours for some reason. I'm grabbing some Vallejo Air paints to see if they work better.

I have great luck with the Vallejo Air paints. Do they make "Air Washes" as well?

Perhaps just using the Vallejo regular washes in their dropper bottles (which I think would reduce flake formation) might be enough to solve the problem.

If you've ever looked at the crap that builds up on wash jars, say from GW, it gets kind of rubbery when it dries. My best guess is that you are getting dry tip, but dry tip from a wash might be worse than with normal paints, since you can kind of re-thin semi dry paint, but not always with washes. You might try adding a bit of drying retardant or maybe even some flow aid to try to avoid it drying so quickly.

Thanks DODcrazy, that all makes sense... I do have some stawet, I'll try fooling around with that.