Stripping my airbrush, pleasant surprise

[Guest]

I was stripping and cleaning my cheapie chinese brush last night after priming my latest model with white enamel.

Whilst I had it part stripped I decided to take it apart further out of curiosity and accordingly stripped out the slider and brass components and was quite deligheted to discover a Teflon type seal, it now means I have the option of using both my brushes for Alclad and any other lacquers I might use.

[Guest]

Nice one Mike. Problem with mine though was that the nozzle has rubber 'O' ring seals, one of which has split, if yours has them try it without and if it works OK, as mine does, leave it off while spraying anything hot. Mine split because I used Liquid Reamer to clean it out.

[Guest]

The nozzle does have a rubber o ring, i'll try that later Graham, thanks.

I assume that the Iwata doesn't then?

I know in theory this o ring shouldn't come into contact with the liquid at any point but.....

[Guest]

It won't during the spraying Mike but to clean it you will need to use a cellulose thinners and this gets everywhere. No, the Iwata does not have an O ring seal. But as I said, my Chinese does work without it but don't be tempted to screw the nozzle on tighter as you could damage the thread or get it stuck, it could also cause issues with the pointy bit where the needle comes out so please take it steady testing without the O ring, I would hate it if you followed my advice and damaged your AB.

[Guest]

No problem Graham, i'll be sure to remember to moan and bad mouth you if I wreck it

Seriously though, advice is free and based on personal experience, I always work on this principal, If I do it and wreck anything it's my own fault and at worst it's a £20 airbrush. I guess they use them as an additional safeguard to compensate for poor machining whereas the Iwata ones do need to justify their cost by having better fit.

On another note, if theres interest i'd be happy to do a 'how to strip and check / replace' video?

[Guest]

I did suggest doing trials of 'How to Videos' initially linked to Youtube or similar to John. I think the response was somewhere along the lines of a silent "get on with it" lol I don't really have the gear to do one but if anyone has, and feels like having a go, I am sure it is something to be considered. So, yes Mike, I would be interested not only in the video but how you do it etc.

[Guest]

OK, will bookmark that one to do, it did occur to me to do it while I was halfway through but at the time I had a couple of paintbrushes awaiting a dunking in turps and was busy cleaning the component parts so would have had to reassemble to take apart again. and it was late.

Also got to make myself handsome for the camera, (expect the video in a week or two)

Youtube is surprisingly simple to use, I'm a big fan, if you have anything that takes video, even a basic compact camera or mobile phone you can use it for youtube videos.

[Guest]

It is getting the quality good enough for when it is scaled down. The Paton Tank video I linked to on Youtube was shot on my Cannon G10 compact. It does shoot good video but you cannot zoom while filming (it is a top end still compact after all, not a video camera) so I may see what I can get with a desktop setup.

Most important with these videos is to keep it short and sweet covering what is needed without loads of flannel and ensuring what is being demonstrated can be seen. Great things about having a Mac is that it comes with nice editing software and links directly to my Youtube account so uploading is very simple straight from editing.

Does anyone have experience of a decent web cam that will do this sort of thing?

[Guest]

Don't know about webcams, i use a camcorder and then transfer to PC and edit compressing to H.264 format, which seems to work well.

Incidentally, I tried removing the O ring from the nozzle and sprayed a couple of Humbrol Enamel blacks through it last night, some Matte and Satin for the engine of the bike i'm doing.

All went fine, no noticeable difference to using it with the O ring so will continue to do this and i'll feel less panicky about blowing Cellulose through.

Thanks for mentioning that.