Airbrushing in the cold...bad idea?

Uhhh...

You know that paint flows best after soaking in warm water for a few minutes, right? That is, a rattle can...

qtaylor  Tell you what is the basement open to the weather or just unfished if its just unfinished go and invest in a ceramic space heater that way the the heater doesnt cause a fire from the fumes, secondly warm the bottles up if you are afrade that the labels will come off then store them in a wrm place for an hour or so. if the basement is outside as in out out side youll have to wait till it warms up or paint in side. hope that helps.

If you are trying to paint in temps lower than 60 degrees F, you will probably have problems.  Not only with the viscousity of the paint be higher, but if your model is the same temperature, you will extend the drying time by several days.  My suggestion if you have to continue painting in a cold area would be to have a warm place that you can mix/thin your paint and keep the model warm until you paint it.  When you're ready, take everything to your painting area and apply the paint as quickly as you can.  When finished, take the painted model back into the warm area so it can dry and then clean up your airbrush.

I'll second qmeister's suggestion - I airbrush in a garage that is typically 45-50 degrees during the winter.  I'll bring the paint/thinner/airbrush that I'm going to use into the house to warm up for a while before I airbrush.  I don't bother with bringing in the model itself - that doesn't seem to make much of a difference for my setup, and I use acrylics so drying time isn't as big a deal afterwards.  If you're using enamels, it would probably make more of a difference.

I also have a space heater in the garage to warm it up some, but I have to be careful to remember to turn it off before airbrushing since the circuit breaker will go if both the heater's element and the airbrush compressor are running at the same time (discovered this one morning a couple of years ago - left me standing in the dark holding my airbrush full of paint and partially painted model wondering how I would set everything down without making a huge mess and then get across to the circuit panel without killing myself on all the junk in the garage).

 

 

That's too funny, bwr, I found myself in that situation a few weeks ago, when half my county lost power in the evening.  When I say there was no light in my basement at that time, I mean absolutely no light.  The cat couldn't even see!

QT