Re: another newbie airbrush question

When you say "killed a nozzle", do you mean clogged with dry paint?

I, too, used nothing but acrylics in my Aztek. I quickly found that just running solvent through the brush after painting was not good enough. (I would use Windex immediately after painting to clean the brush out.)

You can take the nozzles apart with no harm done. My standard cleaning procedure became: Flush the brush with water and windex between colors. At the end of the session, pull the needle out of the nozzle, and put the needle, nozzle, and color cup in a small cup to soak in Windex. The first time I did this, I was surprised at how much color was still in the needle assembly, even after I had flushed the brush with water and windex.

Sometimes, to get rid of all the little paint bits, I would soak the nozzle and needle in lacquer thinner. The thinner will disolve the acrylic paint, but not harm the nozzle parts. I have a small glass jar, with about an inch of thinner in it. I drop the parts in there, and usually swish them around a bit. I've let them soak for as long as two days (forgot they were there once) with no ill effects.

For thinning PollyScale paint, I started with distilled water. I later switched to the Pollyscale acrylic airbrush thinner- the paint seems to flow better. (Less surface tension.) The downside to using the Pollyscale thinner I've found is that sometimes, if you add too much, it causes the paint to clump.

HTH,

-Bill

My local store didn't have that...

OK, I did that right then

On most airbrushes, after you are done painting, you empty the bottle out and run thinner through it, and then usually clean out the whole assembly.

as for acrylics, most people use water, Reaper paints makes a thinner specifically for acrylics and this stuff is great especially for paint brushes and air brushes.

Testors sells a little container with a top on it for the aztec air brushes, basically when you spray thinner through the air brush the container is supposed to collect it

I created my own with a McDonalds soda cup and lid. Just stick the end into the straw hole and spray. There are a a few paper towels inside. This is only with acrylics now though.