Compressor for airbrush - what to buy?

[jayell]

Years ago I bought a cheap airbrush at Hobbycraft (the cheapest Badger make) and used it for a couple of things using a canister of air. Still have them both but for some reason the airbrush no longer works, pushing down on the button doesn't allow air to pass through nozzle as it should.

I stripped it down as far as is possible but still no air flowing through so got a cheap double action, far eastern make, off ebay. To my untutored eye it looks OK but I cannot connect it to the air canister cos it needs an adapter.

I talked to someone on Eileen's Emporium stand at Wells and he said it may work for a while but is likely to fail just at the wrong time, but the main thing I'd stopped off there was to ask about suitable compressors. I was told the basic pump they had on the stand would be OK and no need to get one with a tank.

Thats OK but their cheapest compressor is a tad expensive so I had a look on e-bay and found this site
http://www.everythingairbrush.com/index.html

They have an AB-AS18 Mini Piston type "0n-demand" type for £60 which looks to be the same sort of thing it was suggested I get at RailWells. However 'everythingairbush' have several other compressors on that page which might also be suitable, particularly this one AB-AS176 Finespray Pixie Mini Piston type Compressor which has a small air tank built in and is slightly cheaper.

But would this do the job, AB-AS06 Mini Diaphragm Air Compressor for Airbrushing, as it is cheaper still and cost is a significant factor.

So what is do you lot think would be suitable? I am not going to be doing a lot of airbrushing. I only plan to build 4 small coaches, a few wagons and will have 10-12 feet of track and some scenery to weather. Having written that it now sounds like I am going to be using it quite a lot!

I don't suppose one of you has a compressor surplus to requirements, having upgraded, that I could buy?

JOhn

[DougN]

John, I have a compressor that looks almost the same, I have found it does the job with my paashe air brush (it is the VL version). If the one on the web site is the same I would suggest that it will work with any air brush. I bought my kit second hand from a exhibition which saved me a fortune on the air brush but very little on the compressor.

I have heard good and bad things about the Asian air brushes but like any thing they repay being looked after. I would suggest that you are on the right track. As you have said the air brush is not going to be used all that much it will probably do you a great deal of service. Though if you are thinking of becoming the next Alan Brackenbrough.... You might have to spend some more!

[Terry Bendall]

As with anything else, you get what you pay for. I used a similar compressor for many years - at least 18, but it did not have the mosture trap or automatric shut off. It still did what I needed. A few years ago when the motor died I brought a better model from the Airbrush Shop in Lancing, West Sussex, which has been very good.

Air brushes and sometimes compressors do appear in the bring and buy stalls at Scaleforum and Scalefour North - I put one in at Scalefour North this year on behalf of a member who had died. It is of course pot luck that there will be any again and that anyone who wants one will be in the right place at the right time.

Terry Bendall

[David Thorpe]

I have an AS-186. It seems to be a generic type, sold by various people under their own brand name. Mine came with two cheap airbrushes as part of the deal - one works well, the other broke, probably due to my clumsiness. Anyway, the compressor is a piston one with a tank and while I haven't yet used it much, it seems to work well. Although I didn't get mine from them, Amazon currently have it (with the two airbrushes!) at £74.90, and it gets an average of 4.6 out of 5.0 from 42 reviews - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Airbrush-Compre ... compressor. My only problem with it is that it almost seems too cheap to be true, but it has been around for quite some time now and I wouldn't be at all surprised if other people on this forum have one!.

DT

[jayell]

Thanks guys, EverythingAirbrush are on Horton Heath (between Poole & Wareham) and it may well be my wife is going to want me to take her to Highcliff (east of Bournemouth) in the near future to meet up with an Aussie relative who is over here visiting her mother and I could easily divert to Horton Heath on the way there.

I'm less likely to get objections to spending yet more money if I am doing her a favour

John

P.S. Having looked again at the Amazon price I think that offer is too good to miss at £20 cheaper than the everythingairbrush price for the compressor with tank and as a bonus it includes two airbrushes. More far-eastern offerings but having a suction feed one could be useful for some things.

At the moment I am bidding for a staking tool set on e-bay but if I get outbid again I'll pass on that and go for the compressor instead.

[jayell]

I just checked how much I've spent on my mastercard and decided I could get away with spending another £90 this month so have ordered the compressor, a set of cleaning brushes and an airbrush cleaning pot.

That will have to be my last spend on railway related stuff for a while as I have an MOT and car service due at beginning of Sept and I'll need the car to get to Aylesbury!

John

[jayell]

Phew! I was outbid 1 hour before the auction came to an end. Whilst I'd like to have another staking tool I don't need it, I only wanted it to try it out as a means of impressing rivet heads on plastic strip.

I doubt if they would be seen on scale size 3" x 3" angle iron without a magnifying glass anyway but there are hundreds of rivet heads on those plate girders at Toller and it would be quite a task to reproduce them without a tool of some sort.

John

[billbedford]

Try archer's rivets………….

The are available in the UK, but more expensive.

[jayell]

Try archer's rivets………….
The are available in the UK, but more expensive.

Thanks for that link, the rivets seem to be spaced about 4" apart from counting the rivets in the 5' depth of the girder. OK it is hard to count them in this view but with my original image and zoomed in I can see them clearly

girder.jpg

or seen better in this one showing the road side of the girder where the visible depth of girder is about 4'

rivets.jpg

and finally part of the underside which is quite complex but of course most of that won't be seen in a normal view of the finished bridge when it is in place in the diorama.

underside.jpg

At least I won't have to model the rust and welded patches that are present today (shown below) as the bridge was only four years old in 1910.

upperside.jpg

John

[jayell]

By this time next week I'll have a compressor and three airbrushes so it will be time to start learning how to use them. I have a couple of elderly books on technique so can work through the exercises suggested.

I don't have a fixed location in the loft as yet for spraying but ideally it should be on the end wall where I could at some considerable expensive fit an extractor fan. Expensive 'cos it will need scaffolding to get up high enough to fix anything external like a cowl. But for now I can at least make a bench on that wall and reserve that area for doing 'nasty' stuff like soldering and spraying.

The reason for posting again is that I am wondering how people organise themselves for working with an airbrush - seated or standing and at what hight would you have the workplace?

Your comments will be appreciated.

John

[Tim V]

Outside in the garden. Lots of light.

[David Thorpe]

To quote George Dent: "Always work in a well-ventilated area and wear a face mask at all times. Cheap DIY dust masks.....will have little chance of preventing the fumes from entering your body (so) choose a mask designed specifically for the filtering of paint fumes and particulates". There's another £25 or so spent.....

DT

[jayell]

Outside in the garden. Lots of light.

It would be a bit of a drag getting everything down from the loft only to find it is too cold or too windy and there isn't really anywhere outside to fix up a suitable workplace. I'd have to use an extension lead which is a bit unsafe at best of times - so I think the garden is not on.
John

[jayell]

To quote George Dent: "Always work in a well-ventilated area and wear a face mask at all times. Cheap DIY dust masks.....will have little chance of preventing the fumes from entering your body (so) choose a mask designed specifically for the filtering of paint fumes and particulates". There's another £25 or so spent.....

I have read all the dire warnings about fumes etc but for now it will have to be a cheap dust mask 'cos that is all I can afford. Later in the year I'll look at getting a proper mask. In any case whilst I am learning to use the brush I'll only be using a water based media, namely tap water + some food colouring

(with regard to elf & safty, I didn't use a respirator when I was experimenting with various glues sprayed/brushed onto fabric whilst developing a moulded chair covering for my employer back in the 1950s. In the end we ended up using a latex glue and in production use there was an extraction booth provided for the operative.

I can't remember anyone using anything other than dust masks in the rest of the furniture factory, not even the guy spraying the final finishes to wood surfaces though he did have a 'water back' type spray booth. People were more concerned about inhaling dust from some of the more exotic timbers like iroko. In another part of the factory we were using a trike bath for degreasing metal tube and again I don't remember respirators being used though heavy duty gloves were worn)

John

[shipbadger]

John,

Please take this as intended, I want to protect your health. I agree that in the past (and sadly from experience even today) elf 'n safety was not always treated seriously by employers but also our knowledge of the harmful effects of substances was often inadequate. When I was at school we rolled balls of mercury around the bench tops until they disappeared down the cracks, played with aniline in the sink and rode to school on a bus with a carbon tetrachloride fire extinguisher. As we had an asbestos factory down the road there was a display cabinet of blue and white asbestos products on the chemistry lab wall, but the glass in the front had long since disappeared so we could pull off bits of asbestos fibre to our hearts content. In my professional life I had an involvement with H&S over many years and am well aware that much can seem as if nanny is in control, but ask yourself which is better, lash out on some personal protection or run what we now know to be an increased risk of ill health. And before someone jumps up to tell me that Grandad has smoked a pack of Woodbines a day since he was twelve and he's now 105 I am well versed in statistical probability.

Tony

[Andy W]

I completely agree with Tony. When spraying without a proper mask you are breathing in atomised paint. Some years back I encountered 2 men in their mid thirties, both of whom sprayed RAF planes for a living. Both had developed Parkinson's disease. It wasn't a coincidence. A proper paint mask costs around £15. It's not worth the risk.

[jayell]

I called into a local tool shop this afternoon, it is a bit of a rarity to have such a place I think, but it was in places like it in Bournemouth that I got the unimat lathe, 4 jaw and 3 jaw chucks and similar engineering kit. The thing about this sort of shop is that they have lots of secondhand stuff, for instance I noticed today a whole collection of boxed micrometers in a range of sizes at reasonable prices. Plus boxes of tool bits, reamers and miscellaneous stuff like pressure gauges.

It is also a good place to get used power tools as well as lots of new tools like sliding mitre saws.

On one wall I noticed several packs of respirator filter refills but no respirators. I mentioned this to the owner and when he had found out why I wanted one and established that a simple dust mask wouldn't be suitable told me that he could get the type I needed quite cheaply so I said I'd be back later after I'd had a chance to learn to use the airbrush.

So be assured I will get protection before I do any real spraying

John

[Paul Willis]

On one wall I noticed several packs of respirator filter refills but no respirators. I mentioned this to the owner and when he had found out why I wanted one and established that a simple dust mask wouldn't be suitable told me that he could get the type I needed quite cheaply so I said I'd be back later after I'd had a chance to learn to use the airbrush.

So be assured I will get protection before I do any real spraying

John,

I know that you've heard the collective message, so this isn't a further attempt to convince you

It's just another data point. I used to be of the devil-may-care approach to spraying, using only a dust mask if I remembered that. I can't remember what made me change my mind, but if may have been a messy job in the loft with lots of dust and glass fibre. I also decided that I wanted a mask for spraying, so it needed to trap chemicals rather than just dust.

I went for a Drager mask from Screwfix for under thirty quid. http://www.screwfix.com/p/dr-ger-p3-chemical-half-mask-set/39216

It's actually so good that I cannot "taste" cellulose or enamel fumes when using it; something that is immediately obvious when I take the mask off after spraying.

So I'm definitely a convert, and would never work in a hazardous environment without it now. In fact it lives under my modelling desk next to the airbrush.

HTH
Flymo

[Terry Bendall]

And another piece of information. Dust masks come in different grades. It is possible to buy what is called a nuisance dust mask which is fairly useless for what we need. Dust masks come in three grades FFP1, FFP2 and FFP3. The web site that Flymo quotes lists all three and it is the FFP3 grade that is needed for spraying. Don't forget to but some spare filters and change them regularly.

On your bridge at Toller, Wills make a Vari-girder kit, SS57 which is a dead ringer for what you want. It could save a lot of work. You can see how I used it at http://www.scalefour.org/shows/S4North2 ... t_4232.jpg

Terry Bendall

[jayell]

And another piece of information. Dust masks come in different grades. It is possible to buy what is called a nuisance dust mask which is fairly useless for what we need. Dust masks come in three grades FFP1, FFP2 and FFP3. The web site that Flymo quotes lists all three and it is the FFP3 grade that is needed for spraying. Don't forget to but some spare filters and change them regularly.

Thanks for the detailed info re filter types, I'll have a look at the screwfix ones, makes sense to buy from them as they have three sales outlets in Yeovil including (I think) their main office. I may even have a couple of years old catalogue up in the attic which I'd have obtained from my son-in-law, he buys a lot from Screwfix or did when he was doing house-renovation (they were into 'buy to let' but have now sold nearly all their properties including the one we live in!)

I forgot to mention that one of those Iwata Cleaning Stations arrived in the post about an hour ago so at least I won't be filling the air with nasties when I'm cleaning the airbrush

On your bridge at Toller, Wills make a Vari-girder kit, SS57 which is a dead ringer for what you want. It could save a lot of work. You can see how I used it at http://www.scalefour.org/shows/S4North2 ... t_4232.jpg

I looked at the Wills kit but it isn't really suited to the Toller design which actually has five girder in each span, 3 x 4' deep girders under the roadway and the 2 x 5' deep girders flanking the roadway. There are two brick arches between the 3 lower girders running across the line of the tracks and lots of 'brackets' linking the upper & lower girders.

Even the brick pillars at each end of the bridge and the central one aren't simply extensions of the supporting buttreses but are skewed in relation to them by a few degrees. The last 'oddity' is than the girders don't meet exactly in the centre of the middle buttress despite all four of the upper girders being the same length.

Some of these details show in photos I've already posted but I'll sort out some more. I need to resize the original images first and do some cropping so I only send relevant stuff. ( I have now posted these in 'jayells thread')

There are a couple of girder bridges in Yeovil, the one at what would have been the entrance to Yeovil Town Station on the route from Pen Mill also has brick arches underneath but isn't such a complex design as the Toller one. The other one near what was Hendford Halt I don' know about, although I have cycled beneath it many time I've never looked up at the construction. The forecast is for rain today so I'll not risk getting wet just to take some photos but tomorrow should be a better day (if the forecasters have it right) so I'll take the camera for a walk in the morning

John

[jayell]

I went for a Drager mask from Screwfix for under thirty quid. http://www.screwfix.com/p/dr-ger-p3-chemical-half-mask-set/39216

That particular mask isn't in my 3 year old dead-tree catalogue so I followed your URL and noticed there are two similar the other being a 'painter-half-mask-set'. Any particular reason why you picked the 'chemical' one, the 'painter' one gets mostly good user reviews.

John

[Paul Willis]

I went for a Drager mask from Screwfix for under thirty quid. http://www.screwfix.com/p/dr-ger-p3-chemical-half-mask-set/39216

That particular mask isn't in my 3 year old dead-tree catalogue so I followed your URL and noticed there are two similar the other being a 'painter-half-mask-set'. Any particular reason why you picked the 'chemical' one, the 'painter' one gets mostly good user reviews.

Hi John,

I can't specifically recall that there were two different ones in the catalogue when I ordered it. However I do messing around with quantities of cellulose thinners and the like, I'd rather go for the one with specific chemical protection.

There shows no apparent difference on the Screwfix website, but tracing them back to the Drage website there is. The Chemical one https://www.draegershop.co.uk/Occupational_Safety_Equipment/Masks/Re-useable/Half_-_dual_filter/Drger_X-plore_3300M_and_ABEK1HgP3_R_D_Chemical_workset/prod-R57794/cc-Halfdualfilter/Draeger-Safety-Storefront.html seems to show a more comprehensive set of capabilities from the filter.

So I'm no expert, but this worked for me

Cheers
Flymo

[jayell]

Compressor delivered about 9 am this morning so this thread is more or less finished.

I had a look at screwfix again to see what extractor fans they sold and it looks like I can get something reasonably cheaply to extract through the wall, it will be a good thing to improve loft ventilation even if I wasn't to be doing any spraying up there as there is only one small velux type window in the roof and it gets too hot to work up there when we have any sun.

Must talk to my son-in-law and grandson to see about getting it installed as I know they have access to a scaffolding tower, though I'm not sure how tall it is.

John