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I recently purchased a Sil-Air 30/9 compressor and am now looking to get an airbrush.

I spend quite a lot of time painting, 40k models mainly, and feel that an airbrush would be a natural next step, both to paint better and to speed up.

I have spent some time at a friend of mine's airbrush station and am somewhat comfortable with his setup.

He has a relatively cheap brush for priming and vehicles and an iwata neo for more detailed work.

I'm looking for a similar setup myself, will probably chose his cheaper model, but I'm not so sure about the iwata. I clogged it up a lot, which surely has to do with experience. Apart from that I have no real frame of reference.

Reading reviews it's hard to tell what the different brands have to offer, I don't mind going up to $200,but would it be a waste? Do some clogg less than others? Where can I get info on how they really differ?

Hi mate ! You are right about airbrushes, you will start to use them for everything soon !
Clogging is a pain in the ass. I use mostly Tamiya and Vallejo paints and thin them with isopropyl alcohol.
Thinning with water stops my brush dead, and GW paints are problematic for the most part too.
I actually use a Chinese 50 dollar copy of a 500 dollar Iwata and get on just fine with it, tho I am by no means an artist, it does what I want it to do

Thanks! I guess they will all clog until you learn how to work your particular brush, probably not something that I should emphasize when deciding on one

torblind wrote:
Thanks! I guess they will all clog until you learn how to work your particular brush, probably not something that I should emphasize when deciding on one

Exactly. In my small experience with a single action Badger and a double action Chinese copy its more to do with the paint than the brush itself when it comes to clogging.
Also small things you will learn of YouTube etc are invaluable, my Chinese clone wouldn't work a while back for no particular reason, all my previous fixes didn't do it, so I scoured the net and found a guy who put Vaseline on every threaded joint and never had a problem, boom the tinyest dab of Vaseline on every single joint and thread and it now works slicker than goose snot.