Essentials! Get Started With The Airbrush 

Mega - thanks so much for choosing to join us!

This is unlikely to be a video that we make, simply because I'm trying to give advice on airbrushing which gives short cuts which work. This isn't really a short cut topic! All paints by law offer advice on the bottle as to how you should deal with them. Follow that. I would say, that using a spray out pot is the single best thing you can do to mitigate this issue, whether or not you use a mask.

Thank you for joining us Steve!

Hi Matt - thanks for the question. As long as you don't need huge paint capacity, we firmly believe that our new ULTRA 2024 is the best first airbrush you could possibly have. It's the only airbrush currently available, which has features specifically designed to help the beginner learn how to use the double action airbrush trigger straight out of the box. Take a look on our site here harder-airbrush.net/pages/ultra2024

@@harderairbrush great! Thanks for the reply. I’ll check out the video

Quite honestly, anything we can make about the history of the airbrush cannot surpass the incredible work done by Andy Penaluna, as true master, artist and scholar of the airbrush. Watch this, for example, and look him up on his website. Our history as a video which we made around 10 years ago which covers it pretty well :-) Thank you very much for asking! I hope this is interesting for you - I'm a big fan of Andy. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ZV_BIx701Fo.html

I'm of the view that as long as the spray-out pot is used, most users don't need to concern themselves with extractors etc. Yes, they are good, definitely. But right now, it's a pricey addition to the workbench.

Ah mate that's awesome. Thanks so much for joining us! keep us informed about your progress! Rob is a great painter, so you're in good hands there.

@@harderairbrush will do and thanks again for your feedback 👊👊

Nice job on the Fiesta by the way @deanbrown7643

@@harderairbrush thankyou I was following an american guy on u tube who sprayed directly from his garage ,being a painter for many yrs I was very sceptical but thought why not I'll give a garage paint job a go and it came out nice just a denib and a buff after and made £1.200 on it 😉😉😉 thanks again Warwick 🙂

Thanks Dingo!!!

That's great to hear - thanks for sharing! We look forward to you joining us sometime :-)

Hey! Sorry about that. Normal service will be resumed soon! We just have some development work to finish up and I've had to make some tough choices about where to put the time. I think once you see the results, you'll forgive us!

Thank you so much for joining us!!!

Hey buddy - glad that you're airbrushing regularly. We'd be happy to have you join us as an H&S user. There are some great new things to tempt you coming soon :-)

I have the same compressor, I think is the most common one. However I was always using cheap airbrushes and finding it a pain to use them because how bad they worked. I just did what they mentioned in the video, I decided to spent a bit more on the airbrush than in the compressor. At the end of the day is the tool we use. Why get a cheap tool when we can get a much better one? Why overspending on everything except the important thing? My ultra is arriving soon, hopefuly this week!!

@@harderairbrush can you define soon? ^^

Yes, certainly - according to the Cambridge Dictionary: in or within a short time; before long; quickly ;-)

hahaha i love you ;) @@harderairbrush

I am rather proud of that one!!! It's totally true! Airbrush are made from elements of the Earth's crust - not particularly delicate :-)

Ive just bit the bullet on the ultra 2024 time to get back into airbrushing

Ah that's awesome brother - WELCOME BACK! Please keep us informed as to how you get on with it!

Danke!

Thanks for joining us!

Thanks Mike!

That recommendation is usually from people who really know what they are doing. They've lost contact a little bit with what it feels like to be in the early days! We always try to connect with users at this stage of development so that we can really keep our approach fresh and focussed on their experiences, rather than from the perspective of already having that experience level.

Awesome - thank you for joining us!

Wow dude - you've had two spectacular pieces of bad advice there! Glad that we've got you enjoying yourself with the airbrush :-)

Thank you Mark!

Here's the short version. If you're painting at home, Acrylic, no question! If you're working in a paint shop, House of Kolor - oooh yeah.

Thanks Howard

Ah that's really great to hear - thanks for letting us know!!!

Awesome - thanks for joining us!

You have rocketed to the top of my "cool RU-vid handle" rankings.

Pleasure!

Ah thanks very much Manuel.

Ah thanks for that! Great compliment and really happy to have helped!

Hey there - thanks so much for joining us! Appreciate the comment :-)

Thank you!

The only thing i would differ from the video is always buy a compressor with a tank. Who honestly wants to hear the motor going every time you press the trigger?. Other than that great vid with great advice as usual. I just got my first H&S and love it. Just need to do the trigger hack to fix the sensitivity

Thanks so much for joining us!

@tracer0017 the trigger has been completely redesigned on the new airbrushes :-)

Thanks very much!

Thank you!

Hey! This video is coming soon! It will be really epic for us to do that, as we have put a huge amount of work into making sure that we have a great system to answer that very important question, well.

Can't wait, sure this is a lot of effort, however for a longtime user of the infinityCR plus(20+ years) I'd love to see what all the other lovely brushes are capable of! @@harderairbrush

Thanks for sharing - that's a fairly typical experience. The less expensive items can definitely be useful and effective, but they sometimes don't quite make it once you need reliable hours of use.

Awesome! Thanks for joining us!

let us know when you get it!

Whoop! Awesome - thanks for joining us!

Ah clear coating. Known to drive the most resilient painters to madness. Dusty = too dry of an application. You need to see the finish that you want. In other words, if you want gloss, you must see it as you apply. If you want satin, see satin as you apply. Matte, matte as you apply. The wetter the application, the smoother (glossier) the finish. But beware! Too wet and you'll get a run in the finish. Not good! So be judicious. Thinning more makes gloss come earlier, but it is less resistant to running. And try to work quite quickly, and remember to overlap your strokes, knowing that the overlap puts a little bit more down on the bit you just painted, so you don't want to over apply with the overlapped area. Hope that helps!

@@harderairbrush thanks a million for the tips. I think i may be doing too many coats,and the later coats come too dry. I'll try less coats and I'll thin my varnish with water instead of thinner. Thanks again!

That looks good. We probably will make a cleaning brush at some point - generally I try to avoid making products which we feel others can do, as we're not here to just make things to sell - we're here to make things that no-one else can :-) but the cleaning brush is something which I think has great value to users if made REALLY correctly for our purpose.

I have 2 H&S airbrushes, the Infinity and the Coloni. Both are great tools.

Ah thanks man. We actually do think about that as part of the ownership experience. We'd like you to enjoy those first moments when you open the box as part of the experience of choosing one of our brushes. We greatly respect that the people to whom we sell are creatives making aesthetic objects to be enjoyed by many, and we pay homage to you by trying to give you something which has an aesthetic to inspire you too.

​@harderairbrush Second thing you do with a H&S airbrush is to try and figure out what a Nadelfarbmengenregul­ierungenstellschraub­e could be.

Prost!

Aaaaah man this warms my heart! If we can impress a CNC shop owner, then we're happy! Feel free to come and visit if you'd like a tour of our CNC area and the rest of the factory anytime. Just call and ask for me a couple of weeks prior to make sure I can be there to show you around.

Should be sometime in November, I guess. In the meantime, you can buy it here if you like harder-airbrush.net/pages/ultra2024

Flow improver... be VERY careful that you use a flow improver which is specifically designed FOR THE AIRBRUSH. Flow improver for brush painting has the opposite property to what is useful in an airbrush, in that it decreases the ease with which the paint can be atomised. If you have a flow improver that does not specifically state on the label that it is for the airbrush, then do not use it with the airbrush. Generally, I've never got along with them particularly well, finding just a bit more thinner is usually effective enough. Second question - no, I don't ever lube the tip. I'll put lube on from around the 1/3 from the front point. Iwata Superlube is great because it is very inert to paint and does not cause fisheye, but even so, it's not made to put into paint chemistry!

Apologies if we have mis-shipped something. With regard to the Quick Disconnect - if you don't have that on your hose, just unscrew it from your airbrush.

@@harderairbrush yeah no worries, happens. Sure we can smooth that mispack out. Was genuinely surprised i already got it since i expected it in January. My thing with the Quick Disconnect is, i have the Giraldez Airbrush with the Pro Compressor. So i want to connect it there, but that one doesn't have a Quick Connect and somehow the connect i screwed on the hose doesn't come off again. Managed to screw it on there, but i would like to use that quick connect system since i'll get an evolution 2 in 1 soonish too and then want to change between them for different projects.

Sorry - I don't understand if you're asking me a question :-) let me know!

Hey buddy - yes - we are in process with that video :-)

@@harderairbrush n1

Honestly Tony, if you stick to the general rule of using only the thinner and cleaner specific to your paint brand, you can't go wrong. Hope that helps.

Thank you very much Dallas!

Yes, you can! Look up 123664 - it's the Quick Fix system suitable for the Evolution. So not a stepped system like the ULTRA, but still gives needle control functionality, and can be released quickly for cleaning.

Hi Dave - I don't quite understand what you mean... could you provide a link to a video with it shown as an effect?

@@harderairbrush ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-E7A8TatZCFg.html ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-soG6f0g_ZEg.html These are the only examples of weaving I could find If you search lace you get dozens. But there must be other _things,_ effects.

Hey Dave - honestly I think that the way that this has been demonstrated by both of these guys is so well done, that I'm not sure how much I could add for you! Both of them have created really cool effects and they have documented them really well! All I could possibly add is this...when you're making a design which relies heavily on perfect masked edges, it's always the absolute worst if you get any bleed at all... one way to easily avoid that completely, is before you make the design coat, lay down a very dry coat into the masked area with the SAME colour as what you are masking... it takes a little more time, but it seals the edges of the mask, so that you never ever get any bleed. Very cool techniques though!

@@harderairbrush I'm not asking for you to demonstrate doing a weave, I would simply have asked _"can you demonstrate how to do a weave?"_ I'm asking are there *OTHER* techniques you can demonstrate that are similar. That are like a weave as opposed to painting through lace. Or painting a multitude of low rider stripes. Or painting flames. Or any of the widely covered and known effects. Weave is only an example. I can't name any effects because I don't know their name or if they even exist, they certainly don't exist on the findable web.

Ah OK now I understand... I will soon be filming a texture video, as this is one of the things that can really lift custom work massively. Thanks for the reply!

Och my - my feed just completely skipped the video about the ultra. I have to have a go at that one as well! It looks more hands on :)

Yes - hopefully that covers the question for you :-) generally our plan is to do a bunch of topics with NO demo to see the reaction of the community. Then when we know what people really want to ask more about, then we know what practical videos we need to make. They will come :-)

@@harderairbrush Looking forward to it! :)

Also old socks :-)

Great question. Every airbrush ever made so far has a single air channel leading from the airvalve to the head. Some airbrushes then have an intermediate headpiece which takes that single source and splits it amongst a larger number of holes, before then focussing it back down to the central exit around the fluid nozzle.The number of holes is irrelevant - what is relevant is how the air is redistributed after the single supply coming from the airvalve. Having several holes exiting very near to the final exit can be counter productive, because one or two of those holes may be better fed than the ones diametrically opposite to it, if the redistribution chamber prior to the multiple distribution holes is poorly designed. For our opinion, the critical point is to maximise the volume between the single entry (which is always off-centre on every airbrush due to the paint feed) and the single exit, and also to ensure that there is no direct exit from the entry. Putting an intermediate hole set in between these points just serves to reduce that volume. If you want a smooth air supply to the head, you need an air tank of the largest volume possible, between the air supply and the air exit, just like a compressor. That's what you'll find in our head concept - a very high intermediate interim volume, with direct exit possible from the supply, and that's why we don't utilise intermediary multiple holes.

@@harderairbrush Thank you for the quick reply. That's great to know and now I have a better understanding and appreciation that goes on the inside. It would also explain why your brushes are one of the best in atomisation.

Two ways that I know of... lots of colourful dust on your furniture is one sign... the other is a colourful result when you blow your nose. Either one is a sure sign that it's time to consider a mask, or an extractor :-) but make sure to start with a spray out pot. Great value solution to a large proportion of the problem

The best thinner is always the thinner which is supplied by the same brand as the paint. Don't mix :-)

We have designed the inside shapes of the needle nut to be very protective of the needle tip and to guide it into the airbrush with no risk of catching it. You still must exercise care whenever handling a needle, but this system on the new ULTRA makes it much easier when putting the needle in from the back.

Yes, we know this... thanks for the question. It's something which we are doing, but given the people who will find it useful, it's definitely not something to be rushed... With regard to the 0.3mm... keep in touch ;-)

Hey buddy - firstly, you are changing the nozzle and the aircap too, right? However, it sounds like you might be trying to spray primer with no thinning... Especially when you're spraying onto moulded models, you want to spray the primer thinned so that you don't lose any of the surface detail moulded into your model by having too much primer build. Currently we do make head sets even right up to 0.8mm but I would like to redevelop these within the next couple of years, as I think we can do better now. But for me, for modelling, the 0.45mm works really beautifully with thinned primer. I'm not sure why you would want to go heavier.

I'm guessing that they are content with water as a thinner... For cleaner - it's surprising that they don't supply that. I'd get that question to them! Most likely the Vallejo cleaner will work, but I do dislike going out of brand for thinners and cleaners.

@@harderairbrush they said they just use a couple drops of water. A friend of mine says he uses Vallejo flow improver and cleaner and it works fine so will try that.

I'd go with the water as a thinner tbh :-)

Definitely better to do a quick clean up between colours. It's super fast as you can see in other videos, where we have deliberately shot with no edit on the timeline to illustrate this point. It doesn't help the blend :-) With regard to priming, load up, and shoot the lot! Priming settings typically shift quite a lot of paint, and generally this doesn't really result in much tip dry. If you notice the paint flow slowing a little, then just clean up the needle tip as shown, and keep on. I would definitely just nail the whole batch.

@@harderairbrush thanks, as always!

Pavel if it worked for you, then it worked! 😊

I'll be back.

That's debatable. Take it on as a project, and let us know how the marriage progresses. Other than that, of course, ventilation and spray booths are always good. We talk here about "essentials" rather than "nice to haves" and I believe that with a spray out pot, you're in a good compromise. Personally, I"m not happy with the current price/ value for money equation of most spray booths, which is why I'm not really finding any to point you towards, as I"ll typically do with other products which I think offer great value, but are not from us.

@@harderairbrush agreed, the price on spray booths can be bit oddly overpriced

Hey buddy - just clean it - we already did all the polishing and smoothing for you!

25psi works great as a general setting. Once you’ve got a feel for everything, play with it. The airbrush also works very well with less pressure. Can be useful for slowing the delivery down or creating texture… W

Hey there - no, we have packed this airbrush with features, and really wanted to try to keep the price reasonable, so we had to leave off a couple of things which we considered not central to the mission for this particular airbrush.

Hi, that's concerning, as my Ultra 2024 was shipped yesterday 😢

@@echtalion pretty much. i talked 1 week ago with the german support, friendly lady on the line, she told me the shipment was delayed because of the triggers. they werent quite right... but yea, what i recieved is 100% not right. trigger gets stuck in itself. and whats funny, i now, 1 hour ago recieved a second one out of nowhere. dunno why, i dont open the seal and call them on phone on monday very strange

@Blade86 I'm not sure, as I haven't had a chance to chat with the staff, but I'm guessing that we've sent you another airbrush without waiting to receive the first one back. It's really terrible that we have sent you something problematic, and I'm sure the staff have reacted by trying to fix the problem as fast as possible rather than getting hung up on the details! Of course, I would like very much to see that airbrush personally, as this definitely should not happen. Please email me on wjs@harder-airbrush.de with your order details and I will follow this through myself. To be clear about the triggers... we refined the design at the last minute to give a slightly better return, and I decided to hold shipping slightly to allow us to manufacture all triggers to the slightly refined specification. HOWEVER your issue just sounds like an air valve which is slightly binding and is unrelated. Still unacceptable of course! Please get in touch :-)

Hi @harderairbrush, I got my Ángel Giráldez in January, and am waiting to get the new Ultra 2024 next week (along with a stand). How do I know if I'm getting the "new" triggers? Thank you.

@@harderairbrush Hi Warrick, everything is solved! The Lady on the Phone told me to open the second one and try this. It works like a charm, Trigger response is now good. Already got my returnlabel for my "broken" one. i just send it back and everything is fine. And no the second airbrush was completly accident cause no one did know over the weekend that mine was broken. But in the end, like i said above, everything should be fine and solved now :)

Yes, we are approximately half way through shipments now. We hope to have all Squidmar ULTRA shipped by the end of the month.

Generally speaking, they are piston compressors with high revolutions coupled with extremely short strokes. Then, you also have some node/ anode management strategies implemented within the head before the compressed air even leaves the head in order to double the pulse frequency again. Once this meets the back pressure of a 6ft hose and/or a pressure regulator, the air becomes extremely, if not totally smooth.

@@harderairbrush I have never tried it without a tank but that also adds a lot to the smoothing of the pressure curve. At work we many times had cases where a pneumatic effect would have a "spike" and adding small buffer reservoirs before sensors and what not smoothed out these waves. So I imagine that also helps a lot - but I really would be curious about the small compressors. I did not think they were also piston compressors. Quite surprising :O Thanks for the info. I'll have a look on these later :) (Though I don't think this is as interesting to others as it is to me due to work :D )

The modern piston compressors have extremely short strokes and very very small head volumes. This is why the pulses are fairly inconsequential right from the start (very short stroke, high rpm) and the very low head volume is what allows good pressure to be developed despite the short stroke.

Shipping starts in the last week of October!

Well here's a thing. I've never sprayed with Liquitex inks! I've used their acrylics, and I know they make a quality paint, but I don't directly know their inks... but with so many quality products specifically designed for the airbrush, why use a product which isn't? From what you describe, it is either that the ink isn't really working well in the airbrush, or that you have damage to the airbrush... try another proven airbrush product first, and then contact us if you're finding the same... spattering really isn't a distance thing - if it's happening it doesn't matter what distance you are, really. Generally, for what your describing, you'll be using the medium Sketching cap, with approx one full turn out on the Quick Fix system.

@@harderairbrush Hi, thanks for your feedback. In the end I solved the issue by simply following your first or second rules for airbrushing…use the thinner/flow aid/retarder of the paint brand you are using. The clogging with the Liquitex inks is an issue with Vallejo thinner/ flow aid…with the Liquitex thinner/flow aid it sprays now nicely. Simple solution. I used Vallejo because it is my go to thinner/ flow aid for all acrylicpaints I use (AK, Golden, Pro-Acryl, Green Stuff world) and I never and an issue. Well there is a first time for everything ;).

Great! Thanks for letting us know!

Behave :-) as I said in the video - use whatever cleaner matches the paint brand you are using. In other words, for the isopropanol addicted amongst you :-) if you're using Vallejo, use Vallejo cleaner; if you're using Createx, use Createx cleaner and so on. IPA isn't all that effective at cleaning out WET acrylic paint. It's somewhat effective a shifting dry paint, but if you watched the video, you'll know to never let paint dry in your airbrush, right? :-)) thanks for asking the question!

Thanks for sharing your experience :-) if it's working for you, then it's perfect for you! Personally, I always smile when I hear the phrase "deep clean" being used with regard to the airbrush. It's not a carpet :-) it just needs a clean, really. I would even go further and say that if you're solely using solvent based paint such as enamel, then the need for ultrasonic is even less, as the thinner is so aggressive as a cleaner. The key is really to making sure that when you clean between colour, the airbrush is clean. Also, professional grade airbrushes usually would have far better internal finishes and plating, making ultrasonic treatment again less necessary. But, of course, if you insist on ultrasonic cleaning, and it works for you, and keeps you with the airbrush in your hand regularly, then that's perfect for me :-) I just won't be telling folks that they have to have it, as it's all money, and in my opinion if you get the cleaning right, it's money that can be saved.

Great comment :-)