Noting that the original poster appears, by his handle, to be a teenager, I have to say , I can understand where he is coming from. When I was a teenager, my model toolbox consited of the following:
1 xacto kife.
2 Maybe 4 paint brushes (2 of which were probably testors nylon kind)
3 Tube of glue.
4 Paasche VL airbrush which I ran off my dad’s ancient compressor (that had no regulator BTW).
5 Various testors and model paster enamel paints.
Small wonder I became good at starting kits but not so good at completing them…
Dry Angel Hair pasta or Spaghetti work well too, depending on how small a bead you need. When done, just break off the part you used into the trash and you have a fresh applicator and won’t have anything with CA on it hanging around to accidentally come into contact with. I use it mostly for filling seams on the insides of intakes with CA.
I have a sewing needle with the eye cut like a fork sitting within arms reach. I have both V 2 and V 3 Glue Loopers sitting in a cup, also within arms reach. But what I reach for when applying a spot of CA is a plain old wooden toothpick. Grocery store item.
But what I do like to use when I need to apply a bead of CA along a joint or length of ship railing is spout made of stretched Delrin tubing. Made just like stretching Sprue, but the hole inside the tube remains. The Delrin tube I used is from an RC aircraft control link sheath.
Agree with Don. And by the way, you don’t need to be a ‘savant’ to operate an air brush. Like any other tool or technique, it requires practice, experimentation and patience. The work achieved from using an air brush can be amazing and will make one a better happier modeler. I bought my first ab back in the mid 1970s and never looked back. I was amazed at what effects I was able to get with a simple Badger that I still have 45 years later. I recently got a Sotar and the tight freehand lines I get on a 1/72 German mottling scheme is just amazing.
Again, start with the basics and progress to supplies as needed.
Since this thread has been on airbrushing for awhile, I thought I would recommend checking out the Painting and Airbrushing forum. This FSM forum is a ways down in the list of forums, but definitely recommended for everyone who paints their models. For some reason I cannot seem to paste a link- you’ll have to find the treasure on your own.
A frequent thread in this forum is someone asking what kind of airbrush or compressor they ought to buy. Such threads never fail to trigger recommendations from some real airbrush gurus.
I didn’t say that. I said unless you’re a savant you will suck starting out, hence…practice. My entire comment was right there in your quote. My main thing was that it’s a big purchase for someone starting out…especially when they’re already overwhelmed by the tools available to them. That was the entire point of my comment about the airbrush, it’s an expensive purchase and you don’t “need” it unless you feel you need it to progress.
I didn’t mention them in my original comment, but brush is only one way of laying down paint. Another cheap option for a good finish is rattle cans.
I only switched to airbrushing 2 years ago and my results didn’t get much better than a rattle can until I practiced enough and put in the effort to learn how to use my airbrush. By no means is airbrushing “difficult”. It’s just a skill you acquire through a lot of practice.
To follow up on the above, the principles of using an airbrush and rattle can are basically the same; both are paint being propelled onto the model by an air source and you start painting each pass off the model and finish off the model.
Like the Rev, I only recently switched from rattle cans to an airbrush. I usually only used a rattle can for gloss paints on the NASCAR kits I built and flat white for larger space and science fiction kits. I got fairly decent finishes using a rattlecan on the race cars that I built and good coverage on the sci-fi/space kits. I still use a rattlecan for odd Duplicolor automotive colors and some priming since I don’t want to try to decant and I think the finish is similar to what I would get with an airbrush.
