Cheap good airbrush kit

iwata neo

excellent all round cheaper air brush

Tojo72

You get what you pay for

 

A cruddy airbrush often convinces a beginning modeler that using an airbrush is just too hard.

In all of modeling, I can't think of any advice that's been more helpful to me than saving up for and buying a decent airbrush. I have Badgers, but I do hear those Iwatas are very good.

Price, service, quality.  You can have two of the three when it comes to airbrushes as is with most things.  

Do yourself a favor and get a good quality airbrush.  You will hate airbrushing if you have a cheap one.  If you have never airbrushed, start with a single action and master it.  Then get a dual action.

You can skip a step by getting a grex tritium as it works like a single action but has control like a dual.  It will run you about $200 for just the airbrush.

Or when you graduate to a double, which by the way I'd personally go ahead and get, keep the single and get disconnects. Airbrushes come in general, fine and ultra fine, or versions thereof, and I always like having a good general tip ready to go for painting areas.

Big fan of the Paasche H.  Single action siphon feed.  Easy to clean and most come with 2 or 3 tips and can be had for around $50. 

GMorrison

Or when you graduate to a double, which by the way I'd personally go ahead and get, keep the single and get disconnects. Airbrushes come in general, fine and ultra fine, or versions thereof, and I always like having a good general tip ready to go for painting areas.

 

I just put a T fitting on the compressor output, so both my SA and DA brushes are in parallel.  Works fine- when trigger is not depressed, brush uses no air.

I second the Paache H for SA and the Iwata Neo for a DA. If there is a Hobby Lobby in your area you can get a Neo with their 40% discount for around $60 + tax.

I have a few Iwata's as well as a Master, PointZero and another no-name airbrush. As you get some experience you can start experimenting with those but I do agree that to use them as a beginner can cause a lot of frustration. 

With some simple mods those cheap brushes are good for basecoating and priming. With experience they can do some decent detailing but there is still a difference between them and a good quality airbrush. 

The biggest problem with those cheap airbrushes is that they use rubber O rings instead of neoprene, teflon or some other solvent resistant material. It's fine if you use Acrylics but for enamels or laquers the thinners will wear them out in a heartbeat. Like I said, there are some pretty easy mods and fixes but for a beginner you should focus on learning to use and maintain your airbrush, not fix shortcomings out the gate.  

Do yourself a bigger favor and get a compressor with a tank. There are Masters airbrush compressor with tanks that can be had for about $100. My reason for this is because tankless ones are usually noisy as hell and can't keep up a good psi. That's not true for all but a compressor with a tank is a better investment.  

Go here: 

www.tcpglobal.com

You will find nice airbrush systems for under $200 - it comes with an airbrush and compressor. There are decent prices for top brand airbrushes as well.

Returner43

I second the Paache H for SA and the Iwata Neo for a DA. If there is a Hobby Lobby in your area you can get a Neo with their 40% discount for around $60 + tax.

A couple of notes about the Iwata double action  Neos.   They come in two flavors.   First is gravity feed in the green packaging.   Comes with 2 sizes of feed cups.  The second is a siphon feed in the purple package  

A gravity feed brush can run at a lower air pressure than can a siphon feed airbrush (2 to 5 PSI).   It takes a bit more pressure (hence Venturi effect vacuum) to suck the paint up the feed tube.   You can also pick up a 0.35 needle and nozzle for the Neo at either hobby lobby or michaelS.

I have a couple Iwata Neo gravity brushes, but my current favorite is a Badger Omni with a rotatable feed head that functions as either a gravity or siphon brush

Another tip is to go off to Amazon and buy a final pressure gauge which is 30 pounds full-scale.  The gauges which come with many compressors or are found in big box hardware stores are 180 to 200 PSI full scale.   Most gauges have +\- 10% error.   Trying to fine tune your pressure with a larger error gauge is less satisfying   I have been brushing better with the new gauge 

blaster

I was thinking about getting the Master Airbrush kit from amazon.

But further looking showed me that it wasnt the best choice.

Does anyone know a good, cheap airbrush kit? I am sort of new to the hobby.

Thanks!

 

For the money, I finally went to HL (Hobby Lobby), got my 40% discount on a NEO by Iwata Gravity Feed (Green box).  You see, NEO by Iawata was not only a great buy, but a fantastic easy double action learning tool.  Ease of cleaning was also a key factor to the NEO by Iwata.  

The reason I continue to write NEO by Iwata is that the NEO is not made by Iwata.  It’s made in Taiwan, license by Iwata.  It is designed by Iwata and assembled under Iwata guidelines.  I thought but who cares, I still own a licensed Iwata AB.  It was so good that I also purchased the TRN1 Gravity Feed Trigger Action AB by Iwata.  

Finally, Mrs. Toshi purchased the Iwata Eclipse for our 25th anniversary gift. She got a really nice Coach Bag!  lol!  The Eclipse is also a fantastic AB and I’m sold on Iwata Products.  This doesn’t mean I can’t buy AB from other companies.  My next AB is a Iwata Micron.  The Micron AB is some serious money.  And I’m not joking when I say serious money!  

Other than this, this was my personal journey of AB.  Note: My daughter was a Kent State Student, while a student, she got me to meet an pro AB artists whom had Iwata, Harder and Steinbeck, Badger, and Paasche.  Of these that he let me try out, my favorite by far was Iwata.  This is just my humble opinion.  Good luck with your journey in finding the right AB for you and make sure you have fun doing it.  It’s your hobby and should be fun and not stressful.  

Your friend, Toshi