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 hybridmoments82 wrote:

Talys wrote:

 hybridmoments82 wrote:

I went out and purchased an HP-CS from Hobby Lobby that opened down the street from me recently (40% off store-opening coupon! Woo!). What would be a good complimentary airbrush to use alongside the HP-CS for beginners?

I wouldn't worry about another airbrush as you learn. Essentially, you'll want more airbrushed for 3 different reasons:

1. You want to work on more than one color at a tome, without cleaning out the airbrush each time. If you want to work with 3 colors simultaneously (alternating between them) you need 3 airbrushed, and either a quick connect or a manifold (splitter). Keep in mind the paint does dry, so you need to keep the little lids on to help a bit.

2. You want to do more precise work. In this case, you will want something like an Iwata HP-BH. But, learn with the CS first, as the learning curve is a bit steep. Also keep in mind that masking fluid cares not what needle size you use.

3. You want to paint larger objects, like terrain. In this case, both a larger needle and a siphon cup airbrush make a big difference. You will bow through a 1/3 oz grav cup so fast it isn't funny, on terrain.

But, you really need to be able to paint straight lines and dots exactly where you want them before you go finer.

Yeah, the big thing I'm noticing is I don't "see" where my paint is going to land like I would with a brush. It seems more like precision target practice than anything else.

Yikes! That HP-BH looks like it has a tiny hopper compared to the CS! Do you find yourself constantly needing to refill?

It's for more precise work. As in hairlines, micro dots, not something you're going to use a cup of paint on, ever.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
One guy told me there's almost no difference between tanked and tankless for most spraying, but tankless you can't have high pressure with high flow rates, a tanked compressor can do it because the compressor charges the tank to a higher pressure than it can actually maintain while air is flowing, which can be useful from time to time.

I'd tend to agree with that guy. I've never needed as high a pressure as my tankless, single-piston compressor can crank out, let alone anything higher. The bigger issues are longevity and even flow. Since most small airbrush compressors are oilless designs, constantly running generates heat (which also increases condensation) and wears out parts. A tanked design only runs intermittently, filling the tank once and resting until the pressure needs to be topped off. A tank also acts as a massive baffle, neutralizing any pulsation in the airflow caused by the reciprocating pump piston. Might pulsation be an issue for some people? Sure. Can I see any evidence of fluctuation in the finest line I can lay down with my Sotar on a 10' hose? Nope. A tanked model has more to recommend it, but I don't think it's nearly as big a deal as many make it out to be. YMMV

As for all the price vs. quality discussion, I'd add that cheaper models tend to have poorer quality control - My Masters G44 is unusable, due to a misalignment within the body. Even if it did work, cleaning it was an absolute bear, due to both poor design (the needle seal was recessed from the tiny opening in the color cup) and rough machining (the edge of that opening would kink brush bristles, shred paper towels, and snag cotton buds). My Harbor Freight siphon feed, on the other hand, feels much less substantial but works perfectly fine. The design of the color cup was idiotic, though, with the feed tube only reaching 2/3 of the way down the wall. Works fine after replacing it with a Badger cup.

 hybridmoments82 wrote:


Yeah, the big thing I'm noticing is I don't "see" where my paint is going to land like I would with a brush. It seems more like precision target practice than anything else.

Yikes! That HP-BH looks like it has a tiny hopper compared to the CS! Do you find yourself constantly needing to refill?

I just got my HP-BH a week ago I have only used it a little bit. The tiny cup is actually really nice for the BH, because when you're using a 0.2mm brush on a 28mm scale miniature, the amount of paint you use is tiny. Like, usually, 3 drops does it for me. That means, on the 1/3oz cups, lots of the paint just gets stuck on the side of the wall, that you spend time cleaning up. Also, there are just not many places I want to draw really fine things with an airbrush. In any case, no, I've never even filled the BH anywhere near half of the small cup.

There is actually an AH by Iwata, where there is no cup at all -- just a little slot to put the paint into.

Regarding the other thing... it's just practice. I did as the Paasche guide suggested, and painted little dots in a graph-paper style matrix on a blank sheet of paper to practice. I made sure I could paint consistently the correct size of dot, and place the dot where I wanted. Then, I tried connecting the dots (horizontally, vertically, etc.). And then, you do the thing where you make the line fatter or skinnier by adjusting your distance to the target.

One of the hardest things to do for me was the lines -- to start the movement motion while there is air coming out, but no paint; then trigger the paint exactly where you want the line to start to start (and likewise). I have no idea why, but it was rough to train myself to do that instead of pulling back right away, and starting to paint, well, where I wanted to start to paint.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 oadie wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
One guy told me there's almost no difference between tanked and tankless for most spraying, but tankless you can't have high pressure with high flow rates, a tanked compressor can do it because the compressor charges the tank to a higher pressure than it can actually maintain while air is flowing, which can be useful from time to time.

I'd tend to agree with that guy. I've never needed as high a pressure as my tankless, single-piston compressor can crank out, let alone anything higher. The bigger issues are longevity and even flow. Since most small airbrush compressors are oilless designs, constantly running generates heat (which also increases condensation) and wears out parts. A tanked design only runs intermittently, filling the tank once and resting until the pressure needs to be topped off. A tank also acts as a massive baffle, neutralizing any pulsation in the airflow caused by the reciprocating pump piston. Might pulsation be an issue for some people? Sure. Can I see any evidence of fluctuation in the finest line I can lay down with my Sotar on a 10' hose? Nope. A tanked model has more to recommend it, but I don't think it's nearly as big a deal as many make it out to be. YMMV

As for all the price vs. quality discussion, I'd add that cheaper models tend to have poorer quality control - My Masters G44 is unusable, due to a misalignment within the body. Even if it did work, cleaning it was an absolute bear, due to both poor design (the needle seal was recessed from the tiny opening in the color cup) and rough machining (the edge of that opening would kink brush bristles, shred paper towels, and snag cotton buds). My Harbor Freight siphon feed, on the other hand, feels much less substantial but works perfectly fine. The design of the color cup was idiotic, though, with the feed tube only reaching 2/3 of the way down the wall. Works fine after replacing it with a Badger cup.

Unless you go super cheap, the price difference for a tank is so small ($40?), so why not? The heat is a major issue if you want to airbrush much, and the noise is a killer for me. I own one of the crappy compressors (it came in a $100-ish kit, with a junk airbrush), which I eventually upgraded to a $200 Badger compressor with a 3L tank that seems to be pretty decent for hobby, and the difference was very noticeable, although the crappy one was certainly usable.

The other issue with the crappy compressor is that it leaked air, and the only way I could fix it (other than to return it) was to take it all apart and Teflon tape the crap out of everything -- it still leaks, and I have no idea where the leak is (and I am quite proficient with taping properly).

"Small" is relative. $40 may be a drop in the bucket when looking at high-end models, but it's more than half of what I paid, in total, for my compressor which has served me quite well. Besides, comparing the prices of exactly which compressor a given company bolted to the top of a tank to form their mid-range models, I think the average difference is a bit higher than your estimate (I could definitely be wrong here - it's been a while since I was shopping around).

Leakage is a deal breaker, no doubt, but that's an unfortunate issue with a single item, not a weakness of the general design type. If anything, adding a tank means more connections to potentially leak. Still a case of getting what you pay for, just on a slightly higher scale.

 oadie wrote:
Since most small airbrush compressors are oilless designs, constantly running generates heat (which also increases condensation) and wears out parts. A tanked design only runs intermittently, filling the tank once and resting until the pressure needs to be topped off.

I've heard this mentioned and it doesn't really make sense to me. A tankless compressor only runs when you're spraying, yeah? So it'll only be running for a few seconds, then off for a few seconds, then on for a few seconds. It doesn't seem like there'd be much advantage in compressor wear running solidly for a minute each time the tank fills vs tankless running for a few seconds when you are actually spraying.

When I'm actually spraying constantly, like basecoating a regiment where there's little thinking just constant spraying, my tanked compressor doesn't last for terribly long and the compressor has to run for ages to get the tank back up to pressure (because I'm using air at the same time). I usually end up worrying about overheating the compressor and stopping for a minute to let it reach the cut off pressure before I continue spraying.

If anything you end up running the tanked compressor even harder because it has to fill the entire tank to a certain pressure before you can even start spraying.

It seems to me a tanked compressor would only be better for wear if you were using much larger compressors and tanks than your typical hobby compressors (which are usually less than half a horsepower and tanks less than 5 litres) where the tank will actually last more than a few minutes and the compressor is powerful enough to charge the tank quickly even while you're still airbrushing.

Though I do like the tanked compressor because I use it to blow the dust out of my PC from time to time, I just let it fill the tank then give a burst of high pressure to blow the dust out

I guess it depends on how you (spray) paint, Skink. At the moment, I find myself running air without paint more than with. I'm applying the same amount, I just do it differently than before - less start and stop, more adjusting paint flow on the fly while continuously going around an area.

Initially, I only ever used the shortest bursts and the compressors heat sink barely even got warm. Nowadays, I actually find myself having enough moisture in the trap after every session to warrant emptying it, even with the driest conditions I'm liable to paint in (cold and dry, with the heat on). I'm sure it does make a difference in many cases, but certainly not all.

morgoth wrote:

Ebay.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Airbrush-Kit-0-3mm-Gravity-Feed-Dual-Action-Spray-Gun-Air-Brush-Set-Tattoo-/111495888834?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item19f5ac3fc2

It's not less than $20, its $13 shipping included.

Nice! Bought one. Now if I wreck it while working through my learning curve, it's not the one I payed $150 for.

Grats adamsouza

There is not really any way to wreck an airbrush, other than to drop it with the crown off, or to be horribly negligent in cleaning it over a really long time, by the way


@Oadie -- fair enough with the $40 being relative to the cost of the compressor. I guess I'm jaded because I spend so damn much on models that a 40 bucks for a tank seems almost insignificant now. Every month, I buy at least one single (from GW or PP) that's an inch tall that costs around forty bucks :\

That's good to know Talys.

I had the impression they were fragile because I had one artist friend growing up that airbrushed and his gun was always breaking down. Of course, now that I think about it, that guy has always been accident prone.

They are fragile.

My Iwata HP-CS I've already had to buy a new nozzle (unscrewing the previous one to clean every time led to an o-ring falling off which led to over tightening the screw and breaking it), I dropped it once and had to correct the crown, the O-ring for the back part that doesn't really matter is wearing off...

It's a lot more fragile than a screwdriver or a paintbrush.

Talys wrote:


I just got my HP-BH a week ago I have only used it a little bit. The tiny cup is actually really nice for the BH, because when you're using a 0.2mm brush on a 28mm scale miniature, the amount of paint you use is tiny. Like, usually, 3 drops does it for me. That means, on the 1/3oz cups, lots of the paint just gets stuck on the side of the wall, that you spend time cleaning up. Also, there are just not many places I want to draw really fine things with an airbrush. In any case, no, I've never even filled the BH anywhere near half of the small cup.

Ah I see. I found a BH on Amazon, but there are two. There's a Japanese import for about $50 less than one not labelled as such. Aren't all Iwata airbrushes Japanese imports? Any notable difference between the two?

Talys wrote:

There is actually an AH by Iwata, where there is no cup at all -- just a little slot to put the paint into.

Regarding the other thing... it's just practice. I did as the Paasche guide suggested, and painted little dots in a graph-paper style matrix on a blank sheet of paper to practice. I made sure I could paint consistently the correct size of dot, and place the dot where I wanted. Then, I tried connecting the dots (horizontally, vertically, etc.). And then, you do the thing where you make the line fatter or skinnier by adjusting your distance to the target.

One of the hardest things to do for me was the lines -- to start the movement motion while there is air coming out, but no paint; then trigger the paint exactly where you want the line to start to start (and likewise). I have no idea why, but it was rough to train myself to do that instead of pulling back right away, and starting to paint, well, where I wanted to start to paint.

Gotta try out these practice techniques. Do you have a link for the Paasche guide?

Sorry, bud. The Paasche guide I have is from a manual that actually came with the airbrush.

I don't think there are any differences between what market the airbrushes come from... the one I bought was a Japan Import too, whatever that means

Talys wrote:
Sorry, bud. The Paasche guide I have is from a manual that actually came with the airbrush.

Argh! Oh well. I'm sure I can set up a bit of an airbrush obstacle course for myself. Waiting on my air hose and my huge Vallejo Game Air paint order which should all be coming this week.

Once I can paint a straight line with my HP-CS, I may start shopping around a fine detail airbrush. I'll probably go with the BH or an equivalent Badger simply because I hear a lot of good things about Badger airbrushes.

The difference is that the Japanese Iwata is cheaper and has a manual in Japanese.

The other one is a rip-off and has a manual in English.

morgoth wrote:
The difference is that the Japanese Iwata is cheaper and has a manual in Japanese.

The other one is a rip-off and has a manual in English.

LOL