Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I am looking for a reasonably priced spray gun / airbrush for a novice skill level I have tried the $20 special and was impressed with the way it looks however the airbrush wasn't exactly a quality item and quickly broke / stopped working. So does anyone have some brands / locations to look for one? The one I had was a Badger 250


Automatically Appended Next Post:
http://www.amazon.com/Master-Airbrushing-MAS-Airbrush-Compressor-The/dp/B00BF0MW9G/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1403919918&sr=8-1&keywords=airbrush

Found this one online and am thinking of purchasing. Thoughts?

That compressor is worthless and that airbrush is okay at best.

Try any of these:
Badger Patriot 105 ($75) - solid brush, larger standard needle, good for a beginner
Badger Renegade Krome 2-in-1 ($160) - excellent brush, easily one of Badgers best offerings, very popular mid-range airbrush
Badger Renegade Velocity ($125) - older than the Krome, but very similar with less "fancy" features, uses the same needle/tip as all of the Renegade-series brushes
Harder and Steenbeck Evolution SIlverline 2-in-1 ($175) - very nice brush, good reviews
Iwata Eclipse HP-CS ($130) - solid mid-range airbrush, larger standard needle than the others on the list
Grex Genesis.XGi ($168) - fairly new but they get good reviews, looks kind of cool, needles/tips seem a little expensive

I have seen the patriot come up a good deal as far as air, should I invest in a compressor or just use canned air?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also I am not looking for ultra quality I'm looking for a cost\value mix and from some iyther threads I have read the master is good for a beginner

 Rysgame wrote:
I have seen the patriot come up a good deal as far as air, should I invest in a compressor or just use canned air?

Do not use canned air. A compressor is the way to go, so long as it is a proper compressor for airbrushing (that one in the link you provided is not). You can get a decent shop compressor from Home Depot, Lowes, or even Harbor Freight. Just make sure that the CFM on the compressor is within or exceeds the CFM of whatever airbrush you purchase (most shop compressors will do this and just about all dedicated airbrushing compressors will).

Also I am not looking for ultra quality I'm looking for a cost\value mix and from some iyther threads I have read the master is good for a beginner

Master airbrushes are okay at best. For example, that bundle you linked is $50 and the only useful thing in is the airbrush, which even isn't that good to begin with. On the other hand, you can buy a Badger Patriot 105 (which is of much higher quality) for less than $75 and, if properly maintained, it will last you for years.

Can you airbrush with a cheap brush like one of the Masters? Of course. I did for a quite a while until I made the decision to buy a much nicer brush. Trust me, there is a world of difference between a $30 Master airbrush and even the intro brushes offered by Badger, Iwata, Harder & Steenbeck, etc.

I basecoated my first army with a $10 noname china brush (ebay is full of them) and a $80 mini compressor. Worked like a charm.

What broke on your old brush?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And what do you want to do with the new one?

Any of the mid ranged airbrushes from the dedicated manufacturers with do you just fine you don't need to spend hundreds on them until you start moving on to more advanced things. With the more expensive brushes you get more bells and whistles and much better feel etc these are things that as a new comer will go totally over your head or not even be noticed by you at all. A smooth soft trigger action on a high end brush is nice but not critical for a new person to get going, it will feel better but if I'm honest you have nothing to compare it to and you simply won't notice it.
Hit the midrange ones from the likes of badger and iwata h&s etc and a nice all round needle setup perhaps .5 say and learn how to use it right. Learn what a dagger stroke is and what thinning a color to transparency will do for you, how pressure affects he paint flow and what paints will need higher pressures or more thinning to be usable.
Learn how to clean it PROPERLY, a bit of dirt in your nozzle will break your heart with issues and you will quickly get very fed up if you don't know what's causing it.
Watch videos or go do classes as all the techniques are transferable to any surface airbrushing is heavily stencil dependant except full on freehand and even then stencils will be used to achieve certain effects in our game the stencils are just a bit smaller but they technique of using them and the rules will be the same.

I'd be leery of Masters brushes - no one claims that they're great, but everyone can agree that they're cheap. Plenty have used them successfully, but the G44 I bought is unusable. The machining is rough and the design could use some improvement, but I'm not surprised at the price point. The big issue is a misalignment in the body that throws the needle/nozzle out of whack. It's impossible to get a good spray pattern, regardless of the needle/nozzle used (I got two pristine sets and they both respond the same - the body houses the issue).

I'm now spraying quite happily using, of all things, the cheap siphon-fed double action brush from Harbor Freight (along with their compressor). While less than ideal, it's still quite a useful setup. You'd be hard pressed to find anything better for a lower price, but if you can afford a bit more, you'd likely be happier with something like a Badger Patriot 105. It's a solid workhorse of a brush that should last for years and can, to a degree, "grow" with you - it comes with a rather forgiving .5mm nozzle but can accept a few other sizes, down to .3mm.

I am a little curious about what went wrong with your Badger 250.

Just to be sure you don't spend a bunch of money and then have the same thing happen again due to lack of cleaning/maintenance or something similar.

As for the badger 250 I am not sure, it just wont spray paint at all, not even just plain water. From the get go. It has air and the air pressure is good enough to spray paint already on the model or a paper plate but there is no paint flow. IDK why, I am trying to determine if I just want to return it and get a refund or just swap it out for a new one and try again

It actually sound like a clogged nozzle.

You can get a very solid compressor with a tank from TCP Global. The TCP- t20 I believe. Patriot 105 is a very good airbrush to start with. Shop around and look for coupon codes.

I cleared out the nozzle with a straight pin and could even look through it

Ok, just to be sure. The clogging is usually to the side of the needle path so you can look through it even though it is clogged.



Excuse the very poor drawing I just did for demonstrative purposes.

In this picture the black is the nozzle and the needle, the grey arrow is paint flow and the blue is airflow. The red is one of the most common clogs.

As you can see in the picture, if you remove the needle you can still see through the needle path. So in a sense the hole is clear. The problem comes when you want to pull paint through. For the paint to pass the needle you usually pull back and the conic shape of the needle pulls into to the nozzle thus leaving a small small gap for the paint to pass between the needle and the nozzle.

Now in the picture the red clog forms a cylindrical hole way back in the nozzle and when the needle is pulled back the conical part of the needle is still in the tube made by the clogged paint. Thus, there is no gap and thus no paint.

So as you, hopefully, can see there could be a clog even though the hole looks clear. This was one of the things that I had a problem to learn when starting out and I have actually thrown away my first airbrush due to not finding this out.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
HAHAHA, forget what I wrote... didn't look up the 250... it's an external mix airbrush and works with another feed principle. Well, then I am out of ideas... :(

Oh well