Help! Airbrush/paint jars

I know exactly what you mean. I have not found a source for the lids. I keep a couple of lidless jars for small jobs where I mix just enough for the job and then discard the paint. Sometimes I want to keep it for the rest of the day, and stack a second lidless jar on top of the one with paint in it. I have to be careful not to drop or put anything on that area of the bench, but it works if I am careful. I too have been looking for anything that will work as a lid for the badger jars.

Go to the Dollar Store crafts section. They usually have thin cork sheets you can use to make your own lid gaskets. Otherwise go to an automotive parts store and buy a sheet of gasket material.

Unless you have tried them with success, I do not believe that cork will suffice for gaskets. I believe that cork would get chewed up with dried paint when opening the jar and drop pieces into the paint. I could be wrong, tho. :-)

the trick is not to let the cork dry out and rot. keep the jars tight and minamilly opened. they will wear out, but not that fast. i made a cluth for a model 120 panther from wine corks sliced and glued onto the four plates. that was in 1997 and it still works fine. check the panther owners clubsite if you're curious.

...use semi-soft polypropylene sheet, like what comes with a Badger bottle. At least that's what came in my 25+ year old Badger...and it's still going strong.

Source?..plastic coffee can lids and such. Use a circle template to cut out the size you need. You can even clean them in thinner and reuse.

Gray Ghost wrote: : : Paasche has 1/2 oz lids with gaskets listed as 32mm. Close enough for gummint : work? : Nope. :-) : : I sent email to Testors and Badger about lids, I'll see if they respond. Just : hate to buy more jars just for the lids, the danged drawer is full enough : already, don't need more glass, need lids/gaskets and gaskets! : Get some Parafilm. Testors sold it at one time, but it is much cheaper to track down a source. It is used in labs to seal test tubes and such. You stretch it over the tube, and it does seem to cling tightly. I use it for masking at times, as well.

I have a 250 foot roll. Should last a few lifetimes...

Bruce

snipped-for-privacy@realtime.net (Bruce Burden) wrote in news:wmjOn.945$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe11.iad:

I got a roll of that somewhere, I had tried wax paper, but that is pretty close to single use.

Don Stauffer wrote in news:4c0917f3$0$16042$ snipped-for-privacy@news.qwest.net:

Well, good news. I emailed Badger and Testors. A nice CS person at Badger told me to reply with how many lidless bottles I have and she'll send me a bunch no charge. I love Badger - nothing but good service from the!

Frank

=A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 Bruce

urden =A0 =A0Austin, TX.

Which sounds suspiciously like Glad Press and Seal Wrap......

What about lids themselves? I have jars from an Aztek A270 and a Badger Anthem, but no lids (apart from the airbrush connector). I'd like to find some plain ol' screw top lids I could use.

Obviousman wrote in news:V6zOn.1242$Ls1.817@news- server.bigpond.net.au:

Badger has the lids in thier catalog. They are for the 33mm jars that Badger sells and they also fit the jars that Testors sells in the 6 pack.

I'm not sure if they sell direct or not. The CS person just volunteered to send me as many as I needed.

Frank

Gray Ghost wrote the following:

When you first brought this up, I seemed to have remembered that one brand of model paint came in a bottle that you could attach right to the Badger airbrush. I couldn't remember what brand it was... until today, when I found an old bottle of the paint. It was Pactra. It came in a .66 oz. jar and the cap fit exactly on a Badger bottle. Unfortunately, Testor bought up all its competitors and f*&@ked up the whole industry.. BTW, the price sticker on the Pactra .66 oz bottle (Flat Clear) said 55 cents, and it was bought in the late 1970s from a small hobby shop in Closter, NJ.

willshak wrote in news:cZmdncgewYcdapHRnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@supernews.com:

Good times, good times.

I bought an adapter for my Badger 200 that allows me to hang a Testors bottle directly on my airbrush, but really - it wouldn't be very hard for someone with model building skills to make one out of a discarded jar lid and a properly sized brass bolt. In fact, the way mine is made I could take it apart, drill a hole in the top of any paint jar lid, and use it for that jar...it's held to the bottom side of the lid with a brass nut.

How to? Get yourself a brass bolt that has a shaft of the proper diameter to fit your airbrush's threaded attach point once drilled and tapped - use a hex-head or something that has threads all the way to the bolt head. Drill out the center of the bolt and thread to mate, drill a hole in a paint jar lid to accommodate the bolt OD, then cut the bolt off to the minimum length needed to grab a nut on the back side of the lid, and drill a small relief hole in the lid so the paint will be able to flow out of the jar. Put the nut on - viola. Screw on a jar of paint and spray away.

Sounds like a good time for the perennial thread where we compare lid prices on the oldest paint jars in our junk drawers. I'm still at 15 cents for an old bottle of Testors that the "jaws of life" cannot unseal.

WmB

"WmB" wrote in news:KeadnbUM_dMnC5DRnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.com:

Did you turn it upside down and put a few drops of laquer thinner in the lid? Maybe set it upside down in a somewhat larger jar and add LT until it is high enough. Never had a bottle I couldn't open.

Now why did I say that out loud, you know what's gonna happen now, doncha?

What this means is that wet paint had got onto the lid's screw threads and that dried. To prevent this happening do not shake your paint bottle. Stir only to homogenize the paint and wipe off any paint that gets onto the bottle's neck screws. The reason is when you shake the paint bottle a glob of paint gets attached to the bottom side of the lid. As you lay the lid on the table this glob flattens out under gravity and wicks up the side of the lid with the screw thread. The lid will screw on back to the bottle smoothly. The wicked paint will dry under storage and builds up a thin layer. Keep doing this and you get a jaws of life keeper. For this reason always wipe off any paint from the bottle and lid screw threads. Dried paint has a habit of breaking off in crumbs and mess up your airbrush session. Store paint in an upright position.

snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.com:

I mount a compression strap (okay, senior moment, the strap that you tighten a pipe with via a screw on one side) to the bottle and place the screw in the vise to hold it tight. Then I apply a pipe wrench to the lid and ~gently~ try to open it. I can't say it works every time as I have lost three or four bottles of paint - but their contents were dried out anyway. Mostly I try to save the onld Pactra bottles as they are identical with the airbrush bottles. Also, with newer bottles, when I am finished with the paint, I wipe down the top and threads of the jar and then smear a bit of Vasoline on the treads to lubricate them against the next useage.

I still shake mine, but I got into the habit of wiping the bottle threads off with a paper towel both before I screw them into my airbrush (I have a bottle adapter) and/or before I put them away a long time ago...no more stuck lids in my shop. Not for a long time, anyway.