Wednesday 13 November 2013

Airbrushes

This weeks post (a little late) due to workload and the wife having surgery is all about airbrushes. I have to say again that I am very frugal with tools and equipment that I use for modelling due to the sometimes high (often outrageous) prices demanded by the industry. To that end my airbrush is one that I bought from EBay almost 12 years ago for the princely sum of £25 from a seller local to me so that I didn't even have to pay for postage!! Its a devilbliss Magic Marker Super63 circa 1970's which makes it older or the same age as me!!

It was originally owned and used by a cake decorator who decided to retire and sell her tools and equipment. Its in fantastic condition for its age and works beautifully. It can produce extremely fine lines and is incredibly accurate and in all honesty I cannot justify buying a more modern airbrush just yet. The only real drawback that I have is the availability of parts for this now as its such an out dated bit of kit. I will also take this opportunity to point out that the depths of frugality has no bounds as after buying this I needed to get a compressor to run it. However I was not happy with the cost of compressors so I elected to build my own out of an old fridge compressor, a welded, home-made reservoir and various gauges, tuning, connections, pressure reducer, etc that I managed to scrounge from work, friends and acquaintances.

 I suppose that I don't use my airbrush as much as I used to because I concentrate a lot of my time on figures which I normally turn to the trusted paint brush when using oils, etc. I would say that although an airbrush is not an essential bit of kit for model making; it is certainly something that once purchased and used, will never be put down again.








If you've enjoyed reading this, then why not pop over to this LINK and have a look at what the other union members have to say about the subject.



3 comments:

  1. Great post. I hope your wife is recovering well.

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  2. WOW, that is an antique and should be put on the shelf to preserve it. It shows the obvious quality of the AB and how you have looked after it. I love the idea of your compressor very frugal.
    Great post

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  3. Thanks for the comments guys. My wife is well on the road to recovery and I tend to be very frugal when it comes to tools and equipment preferring to use the cash for models! I promise to one day take the time to publish a tutorial on how to make a home made compressor as well.

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