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Hi all,

Question for those that use airbrushes, do you use more than one?

I was thinking I could have a cheaper on with a bigger nozzle for primings and basing and then a more expensive one for finer work?

Is this how you roll? Or do you just have one good airbrush and change the needles?

I had a couple of the really cheap Chinese ones you get on Amazon while I was learning, then moved to an Iwata then finally a Harder Steenbeck. I still have the Iwata as it may come in handy in the future, but overall I wouldn't bother. It's twice the cost, twice the effort in cleaning when you could just get a bigger nozzle for the one you already have.

Multiple airbrushes seems common enough among those who use them heavily. There's a youtuber who for the life of me I can't recall now (I think it was Cult of Paint though) who has said they use multiples at once. The system they used for 2 for base coats/layering and a third one for finer work.
This seems excessive to me personally, but I suppose if you're doing big commissions or the airbrush is your main tool, then I suppose multiples would be useful. But i'd hazard a guess that for the every day man, 1 good one should be sufficient.

I'll echo Valkyrie and say not to bother unless you really use them extensively.

Well, I have 4.

I think there's a tendency for people to acquire more than one airbrush. They're like other tools in that there is a lot of variety in features and quality. As you grow in experience you might find yourself limited by an entry level brush you started with and look to upgrade. Later you may want to switch brands or see if you can get better results with a different feature set.

mrFickle wrote:
Hi all,

Question for those that use airbrushes, do you use more than one?

I was thinking I could have a cheaper on with a bigger nozzle for primings and basing and then a more expensive one for finer work?

Is this how you roll? Or do you just have one good airbrush and change the needles?

Like at one? because the answer is yes sometimes, though it greatly depends on the application of what im doing.Generally though i have 2 airbrushes i use.

The first is my "Work horse" which is a badger patriot 105, thing will shoot gravel and is my main brush for base coating, and doing anything that does not require any real fidelity.

The second is the sotar 20/20 which i use for specific shadowing and highlighting, usually on knights and vehicles where im trying to control were im putting my shadow and highlights. Both can do this job though, the sotar just means i dont need to be as precise with the control.

As somone who does a LOT of airbrush work, you can honestly do like 99% of all the work you need to do with a patriot 105. You really only need a smaller airbrush then that only if you are doing very specific applications. Think of it like normal brushes. most painters out there dont actually need a 000 sized brush, you can paint 99% of anything and everything you need on a miniature to very high detail with a size 1 brush, maybe a size 0 as well.

I have a cheap no-name chinese brush that I bought to start with (to see if I got on with airbrushing, and being cheap it wouldn't matter if I broke it), and then after a while and knowing what I was doing, I bought a Harder & Steenbeck Infinity CRPlus. I use the Infinity for nearly everything (it's so much nicer to use), but I still do switch back to the cheap brush for metallics. I figure that way I can keep my Infinity free of being contaminated by metallic flakes. Similar to why I always change my paint water and give my brushes a thorough wash after brush painting with metallics.

I got two Iwatas so far. First I got a starter one and later upgraded to a slightly fancier one. I never intended to buy several tho.

I don't actually mind having two now, I use the lesser one for testing and less important jobs, and it also means I have a spare if my other brush breaks down.

Now that I have more experience with airbrushes, I'd say just get something solid with the correct nozzle size for what you want to do and dont look back. Airbrushes are a PITA, and you will end up spending way too much time cleaning them to care about marginal performance differences. Nonetheless, once you see that first perfectly yellow/white basecoated airbrush job you've done, its night impossible to go back to being without one.. all that perfectly covered colour surface, no brushmarks, no caking of paint layers..

mrFickle wrote:
Hi all,

Question for those that use airbrushes, do you use more than one?

I was thinking I could have a cheaper on with a bigger nozzle for primings and basing and then a more expensive one for finer work?

Is this how you roll? Or do you just have one good airbrush and change the needles?

I own a number of airbrushes but I have two that get regular use. One for most of the miniature-related things I do and another one for larger pieces. It turns out even a very fine airbrush can handle priming and basecoating just fine. So most people in our hobby can probably get away with just one.

mrFickle wrote:
Hi all,

Question for those that use airbrushes, do you use more than one?

I was thinking I could have a cheaper on with a bigger nozzle for primings and basing and then a more expensive one for finer work?

Is this how you roll? Or do you just have one good airbrush and change the needles?

I have two H&S Airbrushes, I equipped one with a 0.6mm nozzle/needle set and the other with a 0.4mm nozzle/needle set.
The bigger set I use for priming and metallics, the smaller for laying down base colours.
If I need to do something more detailed, I have 0.2 and 0.15mm nozzle/needle sets I can install.

Key for me is that the airbrush can be quickly and easily assembled and disassembled without any tools.
That is important as it makes keeping the airbrush clean and at peak performance much easier.

My recommendation for anyone starting out is a H&S evolution, which does offer easy manual disassembly/reassembly and typically comes with 0.4 and 0.2 sets.
Swapping is easy, and I see buying an additional airbrush unnecessary for miniature work.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Like at one? because the answer is yes sometimes, though it greatly depends on the application of what im doing.Generally though i have 2 airbrushes i use.

The first is my "Work horse" which is a badger patriot 105, thing will shoot gravel and is my main brush for base coating, and doing anything that does not require any real fidelity.

The second is the sotar 20/20 which i use for specific shadowing and highlighting, usually on knights and vehicles where im trying to control were im putting my shadow and highlights. Both can do this job though, the sotar just means i dont need to be as precise with the control.

As somone who does a LOT of airbrush work, you can honestly do like 99% of all the work you need to do with a patriot 105. You really only need a smaller airbrush then that only if you are doing very specific applications. Think of it like normal brushes. most painters out there dont actually need a 000 sized brush, you can paint 99% of anything and everything you need on a miniature to very high detail with a size 1 brush, maybe a size 0 as well.

I'm going to second this. And I actually have the same two brushes. The Patriot 105 is an absolute workhorse. I have two needles for the 105...think one is a .5 and the other a .35 or something close to that. I can get so much work down with that brush alone. And then I have a SOTAR, which I use very sparingly. I wouldn't recommend it for a beginner...it's much more fussy.