The Little World

The new Mr. Hobby Procom WA airbrush has been on the hose for over a week now and a variety of material has flowed through the nozzle – time for first impressions report.

The facility of dialing the air pressure up or down through the gun with a small knob under the colour cup is fabulous. It can run from full-bore ( in my case about 18-20psi ) to nothing at all. When I start with a fresh load in the cup I put it at the closed position, add air, and test the resultant spray on a sheet of paper. You soon find the best air position as you twist up the pressure and it can accommodate a number of different consistencies in the paint or varnish. I now do not touch the regulator on the compressor.

The back adjustment – the throw of the needle – is as it is with most other guns, though the actual thread is extremely smooth. It is top quality all the way.

The cup is fixed – the only thing I would change were it possible. It is a standard medium capacity and can accomodate enough paint for a good single coat on a twin engined 1:72 plane – if it were possible to get a smaller cup I could load it for small jobs without the thing looking like it holds a drop in a bucket. In any case, it all comes out the nozzle anyway.

I note there is some sort of steadying seal between the cup and the nozzle that is pierced for the needle. I am not going to disassemble it any time soon.

The spray pattern is very fine and quite even – noticeably more so than the inexpensive brush I started out with. It is capable of fine lines when spraying the right consistency of paint. It is set to become the go-to choice for more things – even surpassing the use of brushes for small jobs.

The only thing left to do is experiment and find a suitable primer in a jar that can be run through the .3 nozzle. I use Tamiya primers at present as they give such a fine basis for paint…but they are rattle cans with attendant high cost and overspray.

I have heard of a great rivalry in business between the Creos people and the Tamiya people. I have not completely decided my preferences but I am coming to respect the former. But I must also say that in both cases the companies need to realise that issuing their products with nothing but Japanese script on the bottles and cans is not helping the western hobbyists. We need clear English telling us what we have and what it is compatible with. They make good things that they can be proud of, but we need to know what they are.

Addendum: I used two Creos products today:

1. Their Mr. Surfacer 1000 in grey as a primer…it is every bit as good as the Tamiya spray can and as it was on a small 1:72 fighter plane, I wasted no primer at all in overspray. Very impressed.
2. Their Mr Color solvent-based lacquer – a bright silver for bare metal colour. It shot like a dream over the primer and there was no running or spitting at all. The set-up time for the lacquers is so much faster than the acrylics or enamels that I am going to try to convert eventually to this system – the Levelling Thinner 400 they produce gives the paint time to settle out.

I realise that this may start sounding like fan-boy stuff so I’ll do more experiments before I start trumpeting it from the top of the roof.