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The Hurricane, The Dambuster and The Experiment


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So, I'm getting in airbrush for Christmas and was prepared to put my modelling on hold for 2 months. Then I got a Revell Dambusters Lancaster for £14. The dilemma is, do I wait or do I do it now and brush paint it?

 

In my stash I have a Hurricane, which is the same colour as the Lancaster. So I'm going to brush paint the Hurricane and if it looks OK I'll do the Lanc. If it doesn't i'll wait until after Christmas and have a crack with the airbrush, but will probably have to do another test on another Hurricane first.

 

As a bonus I now have a spare pilot to sit in the Lancaster.

 

The test.

 

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The target.

 

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The Guy Gibson.

 

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Chocks Away!

 

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Good effort, get building. But if I may, I have little experience with an airbrush, the few times I tried, the results were terrible and quite put me off. This could be down to my total inexperience and the cheap cost of the airbrush and the cans of air it ran off. The point of this is to suggest you practice a lot with your mixing & thinning of paints and general technique before you commit to putting paint on aircraft. Good luck though, have fun but remember that real modellers use brushes!

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11 minutes ago, phildagreek said:

 Good luck though, have fun but remember that real modellers use brushes!

That's what I'm thinking. The compressor and airbrush come in at around £130, then I've got to get the paints. If I can do a reasonable brush job then I may not bother getting it. 

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My mate gave me a $5 airbrush he bought on line from China and I hooked that to a big boy 25 ltr compressor I had in the shed.

 

I practiced a bit on some cheaper kits and the results were enough to convince me to never use a brush again!

 

I then bought a decent airbrush and later a nice little quiet compressor.

 

The main thing is don't be afraid to give it a go.

 

My best three tips would be really thin the paint keep the air pressure on the low side and build up your colour patiently using multiple thin coats

 

I will say though I do still like using the brush on the small bits and on touch ups etc.....it is quick and easy and you don't have much to clean up!

 

Have fun

 

Cheers

 

Bruce 

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An airbrush will give you better finishes on all but the smallest parts. Get one with top feed paint cup, dual action trigger ( so you can control both airflow and paint flow at different rate simultaneously) and different needles, 0.2 0.3 0.5mm sizes. A quiet compressor, I paid £75 for a switair bundle off eBay. Spend time leaning how to thin your paint I use Tamiya, Revell, Xtracolour acrylics and each brand has differences when spraying. I use little mixing pots and pipettes again off eBay for this. It may sound alot of work but once set up spraying is faster and more effective than brushing and the results can be outstanding. I would also recommend getting  a spray booth with built in extractor

Edited by neil5208
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I bought an airbrush over ten years ago; after several false starts I finally figured out how to use it earlier this year (and, yes, low pressure is important). You can get perfectly adequate results with one of the cheap (c.£10-13) Chinese airbrushes available widely online; though they won't last, you're not risking much if you have a cleaning fail. They're not going to give you fine control (at least in my experience) but for covering large areas they will save you time and very likely give a far better result than the hairy stick. I was always rather dubious about it, but I'm a convert, even if I still find it difficult from time to time.

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I'm far from an experienced modeller so please ignore this if I'm talking absolute bobbins, but wouldn't it be easier to use spray cans instead of an airbrush? A lot less messing about cleaning and mixing too.

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2 minutes ago, Harry_the_Spider said:

The prospect of unleashing spray cans in my kitchen fills me with dread.

It fills me with paint fumes and probably CFCs but it's a risk I'm willing to take for a nice crisp white V-bomber 😂 

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8 hours ago, Lord Riot said:

I'm far from an experienced modeller so please ignore this if I'm talking absolute bobbins, but wouldn't it be easier to use spray cans instead of an airbrush? A lot less messing about cleaning and mixing too.

 

Spray cans do not give you much control over pressure, they are expensive in the long run and you cannot mix the colours. The fumes are a lot less pleasant than the airbrush. If you spray acrylics the only thing you need worry about is the paint dust. With spray cans you have butanol as the propellant which is unpleasant. I don't spray enamels but do spray Alclad but I generally wear a mask when airbrushing to reduce the amount of dust I breath in - my chest is messed up enough as it is with asthma without all that gunk.

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I started with a single action siphon feed with air cans, then finally to a cheap double-action grav bought off ebay with a compressor from Harbor Freight. I don't do anything really special with it, just preshading and light coats. I try to keep it clean between colors too. The weakest part I've encountered is the threads for the nozzle. Twice I've had that break off in a brush, requiring me to buy a new one. But seeing as they run about $15 ea that's not a big expense.

I have one for color and one for clear coats.

I used Tamiya almost exclusively, and for my needs I hardly ever have to thin them.

 

I've never brush painted before, except for a few attempts before realizing I have to let the coats dry between application. I find airbrushing a lot quicker.

 

How do you preshade with a brush?

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Airbrushing kit is expensive, clean-up takes obviously takes much longer and you will need things like pipettes and microbrushes for clean up. You will go through a lot more thinner than with brush painting, and you will need dedicated cleaners for the type of paint that you use (I pretty much just use acrylics these days). Having said all that, in my opinion, the variety and quality of finish that you can get airbrushing (with practice!) is more than worth it.

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Wow you make it all sound so complicated when it isn't!

 

Airbrush kit has an upfront cost in buying a compressor, on the order of £100, but there are various deal son eBay that cost less and frequently you get an airbrush free with it. It might not be a top of the range airbrush but it'll do the basic job. You don't need to spend silly money on airbrushes in my opinion. You will probably need a ventilation box, depending on where you do your airbrushing but these also are not expensive  - I had to replace mine recently as the fan failed and was pleasantry surprised how cheap it was compared to when I bought my first! You can of course spend silly money if you wish, but the basic hoods that are on eBay will do the job.

 

You don't NEED pippettes (which cost pennies from poundshops by the way) and neither are microbrushes required, they are just useful, but again don't cost a lot.

 

As for thinner, you ALWAYS need an appropriate thinner for the paint you use. I use Tamiya acrylics and that uses Isopropyl Alcohol as a thinner. I buy 5ltr bottles of this from ShinyHardware for about £15 and this lasts me a year.

 

As for cleaning the airbrush - its no more complicated than properly cleaning a paintbrush. I don't strip mine down every time I use it, just blast some IPA through it and use a kitchen towel to mop in the residue in the paint cup. If the brush hasn't been used recently, I'll take the needle out and give it a clean, but it doesn't need anything complex or time consuming.

 

Overall the cost of using an airbrush compared to rattle cans is IMO lower, although there is more upfront cost initially. However once you've bought the compressor, airbrush and hood, you are just replacing the paints and those are MUCH cheaper than rattle cans so int he long run you save.

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Hmmm... Hadn't considered an extractor. How bad are the fumes from acrylics and thinners? I do my stuff in a large open plan kitchen and I can open a door and window, but don't want to stink the place out.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hmmm... not too happy with the Hurricane*. Think I'll wait for the airbrush before tackling the Lancaster.

 

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*Massively factually inaccurate before anyone says anything. The twin blade prop doesn't look as good as the three blade one IMHO and the colour scheme was a bit dull, so the red livens it up. Also, this aircraft is from 1938, so it probably wouldn't look so dirty and chipped. Whatever.

 

 

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