I went looking for small brushes to clean the inside of the airbrush today, thinking I'd find something in the gun dept of Walmart or Kmart, no luck.
But I did find , at Wal Mart, in the toothpaste aisle something that seems to work even better than microbrushes. They're by "G.U.M" in a small green package (1.5 in X 4 in) with a blue edge of the rt hand side called Go-Betweens #872 and Proxabrush Travellers #1612.
They are with the flossing and bridge cleaning materials.



They're very tiny brushes, like the twisted wire bottle brushes, when the bristles are placed between two pieces of wire and when the wires are twisted the bristles stick out to all sides.

The only problem is that they are not quite deep enough to get up through the nozzle tube, through the paint chamber, and into the tubing where the needle emerges from the airbrush body into the paint chamber.
This is easily solved by trimming away the plastic handle with an xacto knife, revealing the wire, to make the brush long enough and thin enough to get into the hard to reach places.


HTH,
Mike

Thanks for the tip Mike! I was just looking for something like this recently. I bought an airbrush cleaning kit but the smallest brush isn't small enough for my Iwata. I'll have to check this out.

Mike

Thanks for the tip!

I thought they also sold this in a form factor that was like you made after peeling some excess away
as an alternative to toothpicks that you can carry around.

Looks like a good idea
Thanks for sharing this

I've got a Tamiya airbrush, which I understand is manufactured by Iwata.

Nothing except a white micro brush will get into the nozzle, but these do great work on the tube that nozzle screws into.

And with the modification, will reach up into and through the paint chamber where mine has ben slowly gunking up until now.

wow MLD, its briliiant, i used that brush before, and i never think to use this tool for clean my airbrush
for now on my G.U.M got a double function :-) :-)

cheers

I picked up a set of Micro size bristle brushes like that at a Flea market...... i know some Shops carry them at inflated prices......

K mart had an Oral-B (?) toothbrush handle with a clamp at the end and 'refill' packages of brushes, but the hilt or is it a tang in this case(?) is no where near long enough to fit all the way up into the airbrush body.

On digging through the Edmund scientific and assorted school science lab catalogs, I have found several more like with longer handles.
try
http://www.carolina.com/
http://www.sciencelab.com/
http://www.sargentwelch.com
http://sciencekit.com/default.asp?sid=GOOGLE&eid=g2101

also a great source for squirt bottles for airbrush cleaning. I have several of the 500ml bottles w caps and a long thin diagonal spout for washing out color cups and brush bodies. One with water and one w rubbing alc.

Mike

Damn! I've been using these since the beginning. I thought everyone knew about them. Still, the trimming idea hadn't occured to me before so cheers.

The brushes work well for paint chambers, some nozzles, paint cups and siphon tubes.

I just picked up the tamiya 74503 airbrush and now I know from these post that I have to get special tools for this airbrush and not just plain old quoe tips I used for my badger.

Happy Modeling
(++) 1:35

Off to Wally World I go...