Airbrush - Siphon type, spills when changing pots

[Mick Bonwick]

On 23/04/2020 at 06:12, RBTKraisee said:

 

While I really appreciate the compliment, I've got a loooong way to go before I'd feel worthy of that word. 

 

Hi Ross,

 

At the time of your airbrush problem I wrote to Lisa Monro of The Airbrush Company here in the UK, explaining your problem and asking for her advice. Lisa is a very experienced airbrush user and I knew that she would have an experience-based view. What I didn't know was that she was furloughed the day I wrote to her, and she has just come back to work, albeit from home, this week. I show below her response to my enquiry, or at least that part of it which relates to your problem:

 

 

"Being totally honest, this is one of the downsides with these style of airbrushes (and one of the reasons I don’t rate them over gravity-feed), they’re a bit messy! They obviously have their advantages though for larger spraying/covering large areas, quick colour changes etc. Sadly there is no way to really avoid this when you first remove the bottle.

 

I would suggest the following: Straight after you remove the paint bottle, spray out the excess into a paper towel. Then have a spare bottle filled with cleaner (or water), attach that and blast the cleaner or water through. Remove the cleaner bottle and a quick wipe around the siphon first with a paper towel should also do the trick. I hope this helps."

 

 

So now you know what a professional airbrush user thinks of the problem. The fact that you have, independently, found a working resolution is to applauded.

[RBTKraisee]

Thanks Mick!

 

What Lisa suggests has become part of my SOP, so it's good to see that I'm now doing things the right way!

 

One extra step I do, is after disconnecting a bottle, I immediately blow any internal excess away as Lisa describes, but then I've always got a sheet of kitchen tissue paper dampened with some cleaner (Medea Airbrush Cleaner or Lacquer Thinner for Acrylics, Mineral/White Spirits for oil based) and twist a corner up to make a thin insert like a pipecleaner (you could use those, but tissue is a lot cheaper and has four clean corners on every sheet!) and I manually clean the bottle insert hole under the airbrush before attaching the bottle of cleaner that I will blow through the airbrush as Lisa describes.

 

The extra cleaning step ensures no paint can get on the cleaner bottle nozzle, and avoids any possibility of potential back-flow of paint into the cleaner bottle itself.

 

I can do a colour changeover in about one minute, maybe two if it's a particularly messy paint - and for some reason some are definitely more prone to mess!   That Blue Angel Blue Testors Model Master paint that I started off testing at the head of this thread (and my whole venture into airbrushing) always caused far more of a clean up operation than anything else I've tried so far! LOL

 

If you get a chance, please do thank Lisa on my behalf, for her advice.   And I hope her furlough wasn't too much of a problem for her and that she's settling smoothly back into the swing of things.

 

Ross.