- Member since
January 2005
- From: Portland, Oregon
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Posted by fantacmet
on Friday, January 11, 2008 3:13 AM
Head on over to airbrush.com it's mostly artistic, but everything you need to know is over there. Including helpmods to your airbrush if it doesn't come with certain features. As for solvents and primers it depends on what kind of paint you want to use. If you use laquer you will need laquer thinner, and a good sealer. Enamels, a good sealer is still recommended. Primer of the same type as the paint you are going to use. If using acrylic you don't really need a primer unless you need to cover up body work like red putty on a white kit or something. Model Master acrylics don't need any thinning out of the bottle and coat well. Tamiya acrylics need very little thinner. Tamiya Thinner is the acrylic thinner I recommend for Tamiya, Model Master, Testors, and Gunze acrylic paints. It works great with all of them with no adverse effects. Unlike some other thinners, Tamiya thinner includes agents to break surface tension which is good. It is essentially, water, alcohol, and some type of detergent soap. Exact formula is not known. For acrylic paints, I recommend using alcohol for cleaning the airbrush, it works good and is dirt cheap. The model master stuff works good too but expensive. I would still get one bottle of model master acrylic airbrush cleaner though and after it's empty reuse the bottle because it has a great spout for cleaning. Other types of paints you can use the thinner to clean the airbrush. If you are using an aztec airbrush, or a testors of the same design with the interchangeable tips, make sure the tip is appropriate for the type of paint you are going to use, as they have a seperate acrylic tip lineup that works really good with the acrylics. I'll be honest I use my Aztec ONLY for airbrushing metalizers by Model Master. I use standard paint thinner for cleaning, and it works great. My other airbrush I picked up is a double action by model maker. I paid 69 bucks for it, and it's the equa; of any other metal bodied double action. Plenty of features too. My comrpessor is from HArbor Freight and is identical to many compressors you can get from other sources, but isntead of being 200+ it costs 69 or 79 bucks. Plus the cost of the regulator which I recommend getting at harbor freight if your funds are at a minimum. If not then I still recommend that same comrpessor(why pay more for the same item with a different name?), and get a regulator of ebtter quality somewhere else. If you are using anything other then acrylics GET A WATER/MOISTURE TRAP!!!!!! I can't stress that one enough. It is still a concern with acrylics but nowhere to the same degree. A tiny bit of moisture isn't going to hurt an acrylic job but will destroy anything else. I hope I have covered enough here to get you going with what is on airbrush.com. Only other thing I can recommend, is if you are going to get a double action, don't buy the aztec. Most of the advantages of a double action aren't there with the aztecs for some reason. I think it is the tip design. Forget about freehanding camo jobs, or doing great custom graphics on auto's using double action techniques if you hve a DA aztec. Althuogh the aztevs still make good airbrushes. The reason Aztecs aren't so good with acrylics is cleaning. Acrylics dry nasty hard, and you an't disassemble the needle assembly when it eventually gets gummed up like you can with a metal body airbrush. If you want a link to model maker airbrushes I'd be happy to get you one. Michael
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