Hi Guys,

Well, last night I finally got a compressed gas setup going to power my airbrush. I have been wanting a system like this for years but for one reason or another (money, moving) I wasn't able to get it going. The money was actually not much: $75 for reconditioned regulator and guages, $1.22 for teflon tape, $45 one-year lease on cylinder and $26.30 for a nitrogen fill. (Canadian dollars) I had previously been using propel with the little screw on top to supposedly regulate pressure.

Well, last night I base painted five braille scale AFVs using (according to the guage)15psi. All I can say is that if that was 15 psi, I must have been using 150psi with the propel cans. Those cans are aptly named because they tended to propel my models into the air when hit by that blast of paint. I had invented a new branch of the military: airborne armoured corps! Anyway, the tamiya acrylic thinned about 50:50 with 99% isopropanol went on very well without creating a huge cloud of paint and thinner. The paint stream did not blow off any small parts and I had no trouble regulating the pressure. Cleanup was easy too because I didn't have to be concerned about using up too much gas. Well, I can't believe I waited so long to set this up. Tonight, I hope to thin the paint more, lower the pressure and try to do some fine lines.

Cheers,

Jim

I use a small (20#) CO2 setup. depending on how thin the paint is i've had a pressure as low as 5psi.......

It seems in Canada they use a different system for measuring the cylinder's size. They measure how much water it takes to fill the cylinder at atmosperic pressure. So there are 9 litre, 11 litre and 16 litre cylinders. I have the 16 litre. 16 litres of water weighs 16 kg which is about 35 pounds. I'm not sure if that is how they measure your cylinder. Anyway, it should last a long time. I got the nitrogen system because it was slightly cheaper, I don't think there is any difference as far as the painting goes.

Shouldn't be..... there's no Moisture in either Gas