From: Barclay, Tom <tomb@b...>
Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2000 11:52:03 -0500
Subject: [TOOLS] Airbrush Question
Yo, airbrush painting list-ites.... Since the advice on the Dremel was so good, I'm gonna ask an airbrush question. I've been eyeing a paasche airbrush (well a number of them) and I asked the list about airbrushes and got convinced double-action is the way to go. But there seem to be 7 or 8 double action airbrushes in the paasche line which.... I have a hard time telling the difference between! Why would I want integral mix siphon feed as opposed to gravity feed? Do I need to get one with both? There seem to be 4 types of brush.... AB - Goes from hairline to 3/4" - used for photoretouching, brutally expensive V series #1 - 1/64" to 1" (light fluids?) V series #3 - 1/32" to 1-1/4" (medium fluids?) V series #5 - 1/16" to 1-1/2" (heavy fluids?) Which weight do I want to get? My first instinct is to say "The finer the better!" but I get the impression this has to do with paint grades usable in the brush too... which is to say that if I plan to used thinned tamiya or??? (the AD&D paints) acrylics... I might have problems with a light fluids brush yes? I assume with inks it wouldn't matter, and if you use metallic paints with suspended particulates, you probably require a medium or heavy fluid brush. But I also assume the finer the lines you can do for painting on small minis, the better. I've also heard of heads that let you do special effects like spatters which might make ambush scheme painting on vehicles much easier - anyone tried them? How big of a paint jar is minimum useful size to paint with for your average platoon of 25mm infantry or a couple of 25mm vehicles? Do I need or want the bigger paint containers? I also see some of the size #3 and #5 airbrushes have some sort of easy clean nib/tip/needle/whatever that supposedly makes cleaning it a simple task. And they seem to have a special open handle to allow quick clog-clearing blasts to be issued. But none of these features is available on the smallest two brush sizes for some reason. So, thoughts? You can email me off list if you don't want to eat list bandwidth. I plan to have one of these either under the tree or inbound at Xmas.... I just want to have more info before deciding.