From Basic to Cleaning Airbrushes

Transcript*

Intro

And this is too difficult. If this is your thoughts on airbrushing, then I’m sorry, but your discipline, what’s a nice way of putting it, leaves much to be desired. But don’t worry, as always, I am here to help the situation or hinder it depending on your own personal opinion of me. Welcome to the beginner’s airbrush guide for scale models. In this video, I’ll be going over all the important tips and tricks that a beginner needs to know to start using this wonderful art tool. I’ve wasted enough time already with this intro, so let’s just get started.

What is an Airbrush?

As a good example for a beginner’s airbrush, I’m going to be showing off Vigiart HS-30K set, which comes with the airbrush itself, the model HS-30. Uh, what are airbrushes do? I’m glad you asked. So, an airbrush essentially is a tool that uses compressed air to atomize paint so that it may be sprayed onto a variety of surfaces. So, what exactly do you need to make the paint go spray? Well, obviously, first things first, you need the airbrush itself. You will need a hose and you will also need a compressor. This particular one is the model AS18 K2. This one does not have a air tank with it. Uh I will explain what that is later on. But essentially, those are the three important things you need to get started.

How Does an Airbrush Work?

So, how does the airbrush work? When a hose is attached to this bottom thread here, which connects to an air compressor, then pressing this button down will allow this valve mechanism to release the built up air in the compressor, which travels through this phallot shape here, through the body, and out through these three holes in the front. Now, as for the paint, after pushing down, any paint inside the cup here is released once the needle is pulled back to reveal an opening. And then that paint travels through the body as well and out through that hole that you can see once the needle is pulled back.

Now what I just explained is how a double action airbrush works. That is what most people use. However, there are also single action airbrushes where all you have to do is press down and both the air and the paint are released. I find those are more complicated to work with. In fact, they’re more complicated than they need to be. So, if I were you, I would stick with dual action.

Two Kinds of Compressor

Now, in regards to the compressor, as I alluded to earlier, there are two kinds of compressors. Ones with tanks and ones without tanks. As I mentioned, this model does not have a tank, which means that air is constantly running through it, which is not great for power usage. And plus, this makes the compressor prone to overheating if it’s left on for a really long time. Whereas compressors that do have tanks can store the pressurized air, thus the compressor won’t have to run constantly, saving you energy and preventing any overheating. But um if you’re using a compressor that doesn’t have a tank, as long as you don’t run it for hours and hours, you should be just fine. The next thing I would like to gloss over is the parts of the airbrush.

How to Take Apart an Airbrush

Now, I’ve already done a video before about how to take apart and put back together an airbrush, so I will quickly go over that again in this video. This part here is the preset knob that doesn’t have to come off when you’re cleaning it. That just allows you to set how far back you would like your needle to go. So, as you can see, the knob is turned all the way forward, which means I can’t push the needle back at all. And when I turn it back a little bit, now I can push it back all the way. So, if you’re working on something where you want a constant airflow, then you can adjust this so that your needle will only go back as far as you would like it to. But anyway, the whole idea of taking an airbrush apart is to start from the back and work your way forward.

So, the handle comes off first. Then, the needle chuck nut, then the needle slides out. Next, you’re going to want to take out the spring guide. I wonder why it’s called spring guide. Probably because it holds the spring in place. And then the needle chucking guide just slides right out, followed by the handle. Now you can work your way to the front where the needle cap comes off first and then the nozzle cap. Next, you can remove the nozzle. And this is the part you want to be the most careful with as the nozzle is a very soft metal which can easily be crushed or bent. And you only need to unscrew it a few times with the the wrench. And then you can just use your fingers to turn the rest of the way and it comes out. So that is your bare airbrush. And then once you put it back together, you literally just do the same thing you did but in reverse order. Now let’s talk a little bit about PSI.

PSI (Air Pressure)

So, PSI, pressure per square inch, is the unit of measurement used to determine the air pressure inside a compressor. That is indicated by the red numbers here on this dial from 0 to 100. Or if you’re European, you like to use bars as your measurement listed in the black numbers 0 to 7. So 30 PSI is equal to 2 bars of pressure. Now when working with scale models, we’re usually not building anything too large. So usually the sweet spot for PSI usage is anywhere from 10 to 20. Very, very rarely would you ever be painting something where you would need to spray any higher than 20. Now I’m going to turn this on. and set this to around 15 PSI, just enough for your paint to stay wet and keep you cool. However, if you turn it up too high, then Whoa. Case in point. Now, let’s talk about the best paint to use for airbrushing.

Best Paint to Use

Now, what’s the best paint to airbrush with? I mean, technically, you could spray whatever paint you want. You can use lacquer paint, which is both durable and dries quickly when paired with a primer. You could use enamel paint for if you want something that’s also durable but doesn’t dry as quickly or you could use acrylic paint which dries quickly and saves you from the noxious fumes of lacquers and enamels. So any three of these are popular options. However, each one of these brands that I picked requires thinning, and I don’t think you have the discipline right now to thin every one of your paints every single time you’re about to spray. So, for the beginners, I would recommend Vallejo’s Model Air Paints.

These are pre-thinned acrylic paint. You can hear it sloshing around in the bottle that it is already very thin. These come with a handy dropper bottle so you can count how many drops you put in. You know exactly what you’re spraying. Easy to work with. The only downside about it is it does dry very quickly. And because of that, your uh needle tip may clog up every so often. But all you got to do is just gently wipe the paint off of the tip and continue. So, I’ve got my model air paint shaken up and ready to go.

Paint Application

The aforementioned dropper bottle made it easy to count exactly how much paint I’ve got in the cup. So, I’ve got this little fuselage here that I’m going to practice painting on. When airbrushing, you want to not go all out. You want to have a gentle light touch. So, just pull it back a little bit. If you pull it back all the way immediately, it’s just the paint’s going to just blast onto that plastic and it’s just not going to look pretty.

All that’s as plain as I can be. And best technique for applying the paint is going in a back and forth arc with a little bit of over spray on each line, but not much. I’d say only about 50 to 25%. And then essentially, you’re just building that up until you have the coverage that you want. It’s better to work in layers than to try and put everything on all at once because you can easily add but much harder to take away.

David’s Neat Trick

Now, as I mentioned at the very start of the video, this is just a beginner’s airbrush tutorial. However, there is one little neat trick I would like to show you with an airbrush. The nozzle cap acts as like a natural feathering device for your paint. Uh, as I will show you, spraying with that on gives you just a natural feathering effect. However, if you want to paint something with a harder edge, all you got to do is unscrew the nozzle cap. And check this out. gives you more sharper lines if you ever wanted to do that uh funny squiggly camo on Italian or German Second World War tanks and aircraft. So, it’s a neat little trick. However, you got to be careful when doing it as with the nozzle cap off, the needle tip is completely exposed. So, if you drop the airbrush or accidentally hit it against something, you could very easily bend or flat out break the needle. So, easy does it.

Cleaning the Airbrush

Now, there’s only one thing left to explain for this video, and it’s the part of airbrushing that we all dread, but we have to do it. That’s just the way it is. Cleaning the airbrush. It is imperative to thoroughly clean your airbrush at the end of each spraying session. No excuses. No, oh, I’ll do it tomorrow. Oh, I’ll do it next week. Oh, I’ll do it in 20 years. After every session, you clean it. Leaving paint in the airbrush for any long period of time is basically slowly killing your airbrush. So, it’s best to just take good care of it, make it last.

My process for cleaning is to make sure there’s still any paint left in there to make sure it’s all sprayed out. Okay, sounds like it’s all out of there now. So, what I like to do is take a little airbrush cleaner. Since I was using Vallejo, I can simply use the Vallejo airbrush cleaner. This can work also with brands like AK and Ammo by MIG, but it won’t work for guys like Tamiya or Mr. Color. So only pure acrylic paint is compatible with this.

So I like to put some in the cup. Then I take my finger and cover the nozzle cap and pull back. This is called back flushing. And this helps loosen up any paint that may be in the nozzle. And then spray it back out. Uh, are we done? No. We supposed to take it apart and thoroughly clean the inside. Since I already showed you how to take it apart, I skipped over that. and we’re going to get right into cleaning the inside of this thing. So, you’re going to want to get the very cleverly named airbrush cleaning brush.

This is almost like a pipe cleaner, but uh with more or I should say less dense bristles, but they’re more concentrated so you can fit them inside the airbrush. So, you’re going to want to get that and again some airbrush cleaner and place some of that on the brush. Or you can just dip it into the bottle and stick it in and just thrust it back and forth. Shut up. This brush is a little large, so it’s hard to get in there. Shut up. And now you’re going to want to go around to the other end. Shut up. and do the same thing. You can see right through to the other end, which means the inside is clean. And then you basically just put everything back. In conclusion, airbrushing is fun. Not only can you

David’s Conclusion

get your painting sessions done quicker, but the final application just looks so much smoother and cleaner than anything you can achieve with just brushes. And to those of you who say airbrushing is too hard, well, the best things in life are worth working hard for. So, pull yourself up by your bootstraps and grab an airbrush. I hope that anyone who is a beginner at airbrushing or has not yet started has been inspired by this video. And thank you very much for watching said video. So, remember to like, comment, subscribe, follow us on our socials and until the next one, adios.

About the Author:

David Peckam has built scale models since he was 12, specializing largely on military aircraft. He is a makeup artist and background actor for films and TV. He enjoys watching hockey and of course, movies. He has an excellent knowledge of hobby products and if you have questions concerning scale model airplanes.

*Video by David Peckham
Video Edited by
Daniela Castellano and Leo Nguyen
Transcript generated by youtube
Edited by Angelo Castellano