Cleaning airbrush needles?

Congrats on the Christmas gift.

I use Testors and Model Master's Enamels, while my wife uses acrylics in our AB's. Although I do not have an Aztek (Iwata's and a Thayer & Chandler) I have been cleaning them with thinner just fine. I also tear them down at the end of the day and give them a nice bath using Q-Tips, paper towels, etc...

Just a word of note: I did notice some of the cheap gallon jugs of paint thinner (mineral spirits) aren't as strong as others. Read the labels, I forget the exact wording, but one referenced itself being more for soaking brushes and general cleaning up. Where most are used for mixing with oil based paint for thinning and cleaning, not just soaking. Anyway, the soaking thinner didn't do much good.

  I use a combination of chenille stems (pipe cleaners) q-tips, an eye dropper and brushes to clean my airbrush. I have a Paasche VL brush, but I'm sure you could clean any with these items. Paasche makes a cleaning kit that has bottle brushes in various sizes and what looks like an oversized toothbrush. As a rule, I keep an airbrush bottle of thinner ready to rinse out the brush between colors and then do a complete teardown afterwards. I use the eye dropper to hold the cone (that the needle passes through) while I rinse it, by placing the cone within the glass tube, putting the rubber squeezebulb back on the dropper and charging it with thinner. Just some thoughts..