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Howdy folks...so I've been practicing with my airbrush and have finally committed to my first project...well test project really. I'm painting my dark vengeance ravenwing bikes, before investing in a ravenwing army. I've always wanted a ravenwing army, but never found a recipe for them that I A) liked and B) was fairly easy to paint! Until now, I was browsing the web at work and found a fantastic tutorial for, what the author called table top quality ravenwing (I call it beyond my ability ravenwing, but I'm going to try anyway).

On to the point then...when doing smaller details, such as headlights, should I lower my PSI? I'm fairly fine base coating at right around 20-22 PSI, however I haven't played around with PSI much beyond dialing it in there. That seemed to be a fair point based on the articles I'd read thus far. Additionally, when might I find it ideal to play with PSI settings other than base coating and detail work?

Thanks in advance!

Without knowing if you have a dual-action airbrush it's hard to say.

Honestly it really really is about trial and error with your specific brush. The general guideline is between 15-20ish psi but it really depends on a brush by brush basis. Use some old sprue or a junk vehicle and spend like an hour fiddling around with different psi's and different trigger pull/pressure.

You have to play with it and see. It's also going to depend how thin your paint is.

Sounds good, thanks very much!

Yep, it's a dual action brush, badger patriot.

I'll mess around with some spare parts and see how it goes.

For paint that has the consistency of milk, 18 psi is what I use

The thicker your paint is the higher you need your PSI. Generally I try to use the lowest PSI I can for each paint. If you get a MAC valve from IWATA you can control the airflow at the brush instead of dialing it in on your regulator which saves time and helps you get the perfect PSI for the paint you are spraying. I keep my regulator set at about 35 PSI which drops to 29 PSI when I let air flow, from there I just use the MAC valve to adjust the pressure so the paint sprays perfectly.