What is the best airbrush for painting fine and ultra fine lines on 1/48 aircraft and 1/35 armor? I have a Paasche Millinium already and can get decent lines with it. Just want to try to get finer ones.
Everyone has thier preference. I like Iwata cause I used to sell them, and know them really well. This is the CM-B. It’s a variation on the Iwata HP-B I bought 20 years ago and still works perfect. I have another exactly the same with the brand name Olympia, and like having 2 detail AB’s with interchangable parts. Never find a finer line delivering arirbrush anywhere, especially if you get up really close(even finer w/o tipguard) Another Iwata to consider is the CM-C,
which is nearly the same gun with a larger paint cup.(handy often enough,but not as light in the hand) Both give very fine detail, but the ‘B’ is finer.(.19mm needle/nozzle) The ‘C’ (.23mm) Parts aren’t cheap, so loaning these out is not recommended, but again, for fine work, these are the bomb.
These guys have an unbielvable selection of models these days, check 'em out…
Check this out…
Any good, double-action, gravity feed airbrush is capable of fine lines, it is up to the person wielding it. A $300 Micron is not going to guarantee any finer lines than a Badger 100LG or Renegade or any other good airbrush.
The Paasche Millenium airbrush has a size #3, 0.73 mm tip. It is quite common with airbrushes popular with modelers, including the Badger 100LG and 155. See Don Wheeler’s web page. Don was able to paint very fine line changing to 0.51 mm tip/needle. Depending on what you consider ultra fine lines, you may or may not need the 0.2 mm of the Iwata CM-B. It needs a lot of tender care and need extremely thin paints. It is designed for artist who uses water color or similar. An alternative is the HP-CS with a 0.35 mm, with option to change to 0.5 mm. Most modeler prefer the coarser needle/nozzle of the HP-CS and the finer HP-B is more for artist use.
In addition to the nozzle size, the taper of the needle cone also affects the characteristic of the airbrush. I like the gentle linear trigger pull of the HP-CS. The Paasche and Badger airbrush used to have more steep cones in the needle.
True! In fact needle taper is THE determining factor of how thin the lines will be out of an airbrush. Look at the Iwatas, the Sotar 20/20 or any other fine line airbrush, they all have long, sharp tapers.
You can somewhat see in this picture I took a long time ago for a comparison.
Look at the second needle from the top, the Sotar fine needle. It has a long, sharp taper.
