the perfect airbrush?

criticalem wrote:

I don't know much about airbrushes and I need one which is good at 1/35 and 1/72 camouflauge, easy to use and most of all.....not expensive.

Paasche H is a good reliable workhorse.  Using it with its No.1 tip, it can easily deliver a narrow enough line for both 1/35 and 1/72 soft-edge camo, and being single action it is inexpensive and quite easy to use.  I've owned a few different airbrushes, but I suspect that if I my first airbrush had been a Paasche H, I may never have bought any other.  If buying one of these, get the Paasche H Set which includes all three tip sizes, color cup, and other useful accessories.

Badger 200NH is quite good as well.  Also single action, it too is more than capable of doing 1/72 softedag camo.  The needle/tip is identical to that of their doubel-action Anthem 155 and theoretically should have slightly better control and atomization than the Paasche, but in actual practice, I don't notice a lot of difference between the two. 

A Badger 100 is a well recommended double action airbrush that is not too expensive.  Being double action, it takes longer to get the hang of using it because your trigger finger is doing two things at once, but with it's fine needle/tip it could deliver the narrowest line of the three I mentioned, with the caveat that it will be the hardest to learn how to use, and a bit more money.

Out of curiosity, do you still have the Tamiya airbrush and if so, what were your difficulties?  Oftentimes, the biggest problems with airbrushing occur not with the airbrush itself but actually using it, i.e. wrong air pressure, improperly thinned paint and/or wrong painting distance.  Until you get those variables right, no airbrush will work effectively.  My point being that if you still have your Tamiya airbrush, you may not need another one, but simply have to get the hang of using the one you have.

Thanks for the reply ABARNE

I'll check out the Paasche H.

Yes, I still have the Tamiya Airbrush and no there isn't really a problem with it. What I meant was that their are many other airbrushes which have a higher quality.  For the tamiya airbrush, I don't know how to set it for a thinner size ( Ex. thin camouflage ) or thicker.  It always sprays with the same size. But Maybe that is how it is supposed to be.

By the way I've  only used an airbrush 3-4 times so I'm no pro...if you still recommend the Paasche H.

I don't think there is such thing as a Perfect airbrush, but for what you need it for, one that I've used and is very nice is the Sotar 20/20. It spray very fine lines, which you will need for 1/72 scale.

For a general airbrush, I use the Iwata Eclispse and highly recommend it. It's a great general workhorse. Just use an airbrush with a finer needle and nozzle for your detail work.

I second the Paasche H.  I have the Badger 100G and it's a very good airbrush.  But I still use my Paasche H about 95% of the time.  I've done freehand camo in 1/35th and 1/72nd scale.  I think it's a great overall airbrush.

-Jesse

criticalem wrote:

I don't know much about airbrushes and I need one which is good at 1/35 and 1/72 camouflauge, easy to use and most of all.....not expensive. any ideas? ( by the way, I tried the tamiya one and it wasn't good at all :))

See the following recent post on this forum. It depends on how much you want to spend. You would want to scroll back to see many recent posts on this topic.

/forums/1010604/ShowPost.aspx

Get a good quality internal mix, gravity feed airbrush which will allow you to get by with a cheap compressor and still work ok. If you get a cheaper, external mix airbrush, you will need to spend a lot more on a powerful compressor. My favorite is the Iwata HP-CS.

"the perfect airbrush?" Sorry, it does not exist. For about $400, you can get the MOJO, which is a hand tuned airbrush and supposed to be the best available.

Thank you for your help gang

It's going to be hard choosing the airbrush...they all look good!!

....decisions decisions decisions...