The Little World

And this has nothing to do with a Johnny Farnham song either. Come to think of it he’s about due for another farewell concert tour soon…

No, I mean lower the pressure on your airbrush. I know that Phil Flory has very sensibly said that there is no particular prescribed pressure for the air in a spray setup – he prefers to thin to some standard and then listen to the sound that the brush makes. I can see his point, and I have largely adopted it with the Mr. Hobby Procom WA 270 – because it is a gun on which I can lower the standard pressure right at the nozzle.

Heretofore I always stoked the compressor up to 22-25 psi – it has a decent-sized tank and doesn’t struggle to supply steady air. I thinned accordingly, though the process of dilution was largely a matter of witchcraft. I tried doing it with pipettes and droppers but finally just ended up using a squeeze bottle of whatever thinner I was working with and filling the metal mixing spoon a certain number of times.

Heretofore I have had mixed results – better with the solvent paints than with the aqueous acrylics, but no major failures out of the nozzle. Then a stray article in an old modelling magazine suggested a lower pressure and different dilution.

And it works. It works as well with the Procom as it does with the old cheapie trigger brush that I use for clear coats. In the case of the latter, there is no ancillary air regulator – it always sprays at what the tank provides. Now, by turning the tank regulator down to 18 psi, I have much more control from the cheapie – and the Procom can be turned up or down as I please.

I do not really envisage lowering it more for thinner paints or finer lines – I am not a pre-shading person – but the current setting is very rewarding.