I do remember for the year they released it they made a funny multi-barrelled version for April fools - it fully painted a mini in 1 spray to eavy metal standard! Oh how I longed for one of those! :)
I was a manager at a GW store when this thing came out. We painted a couple of Realm of Battle boards with it. When it worked, it worked. It is not an airbrush. We never tried to embellish it as anything more than a spray gun. It applies a solid basecoat and nothing else. We always recommended two cans of propellant to get around the problem of the can freezing over and losing pressure. If your can froze over and pressure dropped, simply switch to the other can and dunk the first one into a bucket of warm water. Rinse and Repeat. The real problem with it was that it was more often than not broken straight out of the package or broke pretty darned quickly after the first use. We probably replaced every second spray gun that we had sold. And then we probably had to end up replacing the replacement as well. And chances are, the replacements as well as the other ones that didn't come back probably ended up getting broken but the customer was just couldn't be bothered to bring it back. The part that broke most often and sometimes even came broken straight out of the package was the flimsy hose that would connect to the propellant. That thing deteriorated pretty quickly. The very process of moving it around causes kinks in the hose and then the plastic around those kinks would split. And then it becomes useless.
I still have one, I think it'd work, but the design of the can end of the hose has plastic threads that are very easily damaged and won't seal if they are damaged by misalignment iirc.
It’s a single action, siphon feed spray gun, running off a can of compressed air…. Similar products are available even now from humbrol and revell, and they have exactly the same issues as the GW one (they are slightly cheaper, obviously, but they also don’t look like a hand flamer - pay your money, take your choice etc). The problem here isn’t so much the product, more people expecting it to act like an airbrush set up which would cost at least 4 or 5 times the price (ie £20-odd for this vs £90-£100ish for one of the AS186 airbrush and compressor sets off Amazon)
I used it to begin with as it’s meant to be used (I.e. to basecoat), and I even address this in the video that it was never designed to be an airbrush…
@@BenjisHobbies yeah, sorry - my reply comes off as a bit snarkier than it’s really meant to be - your video is entirely fair. I just find it weird that after 10 or 15 years, it’s still rolled out as an example of a terrible, overpriced GW product, but it’s not too different price or performance wise to any similar products out there. I got the Revell one iirc - I think I paid £25 for a kit with the spray gun, air, some airbrush primer and a bottle of cleaner. Not a terrible little kit, but performance was pretty much exactly as you’ve shown here. Basecoated some marines with it, but could never quite get the consistency right. You are definitely correct that if it had been released now, with a dozen hobby RU-vid channels all offering tutorials on release day (and paint company’s offering ready made paints), it’d probably have gone down much better.
@@EmbraCraig no need to apologise. The internet doesn’t translate intent and emotion particularly well! It was really just a tongue in cheek look at an old product that GW sold a long time ago. It isn’t necessarily a ‘review’ as such and generally in most of my videos I’m very pro-GW, which isn’t seen that often these days 😅
@@EmbraCraig Well, it wasn't terrible but it sure wasn't good even in comparison. The problem is that (at least from my local shop's experience) Hum and Rev ones didn't break just because you looked at them funny (the GW was pretty notorious for that IIRC) but the perception of GW as being greedy fcks was already well established and imho far from totally undeserved. And also this thing basically became urban legend so a lot of really over the top critique probably comes from people who never even saw it.
The nozzle design in nearly identical to the Paasche H-1AS, a single action airbrush. Once you hooked it up to your compressor, you got roughly the same results as the Paasche. A few airbrush manufacturers put out air-can propelled "paint guns" around the same time, all suffered the same consequences as the CSG. :)
The Paasche works wonders for priming and base coating. I think the issue with this thing, other than the cans and poor overall quality, was in the way it was marketed.
@@Pikilloification my apologies, I wasn't clear. Yes, the Paasche H-1AS is great for basing and priming. It was my first airbrush before I moved on to the VL. Having said that, I was definitely poo pooing the use of a can of compressed air. Haha. I tried it once. Awful, just awful. :D
I think the main issue is that it’s a condensed version of an industrial/diy airbrush not a model airbrush so should be used outside for base coating en masse. I remember the GW video and the guy even hooks it up to a compressor so I think GW’s intention was that the air cans were a support product to make the air gun work rather than ideal solution. The other issue is back in 2008 most war games miniature painters (myself included) didn’t have a clue what an airbrush was let alone how to use one so user error could also have been a massive contributor to its failings. Great video as alway Benji and wonderful trip down memory lane.
I still own a very old Badger air brush that is essentially the same thing, even down to using the air can. It came with separate lids you could use to mix the paint, so it wasn't a guaranteed mess in that regard.
I remember almost buying this with my brother for basecoating our armies, we thought the flamer design was so cool! 10 years later and I have a proper airbrush now
I had this. I was new to hobby and had painted orc waagh without even rattlecans (did not know that was even a thing). I did not know anything about airbrushing, but when i saw this in local store, i was like: This is sooooo cool. Anyhow. I painted whole army of Taus with this bad boy, and was really happy with the result. Main issue was the freezing cans. I had like 3 in rotation, so i could change warmed up can when current froze. No any other issues. And i still have that Tau army!
Honestly, I’d love to see GW re-do this one. It actually seems like a great idea/product to get kids introduced to airbrushes, and getting zenithal highlights, and especially army painting!!
@@LinkiePup it would need some refining but I definitely think it could be useful, and probably work out a lot cheaper than buying specific coloured spray cans!
@@BenjisHobbies I'm lowkey sure that filling it with prometheum instead if paint would make it work better, if only because it works so badly with paint Also it's literally a hand flamer
This was my first and only foray into airbrushing. The nozzle continuously clogged, the propellant valve leaked and the trigger kept sticking. Having wasted an entire pot of paint, can of propellant and approximately six hours of my life attempting to figure out where I was going wrong (plus probably the same amount of time scrubbing my hands clean), I simply gave up. Everything related to this endeavor went in the bin and I simply assumed that airbrushing was not for me. Over a decade later here I am, learning that it was a faulty product all along! Thank you for enlightening me.
Back when these were around you had Chaos Black and Skull White spray cans and that was it. When it came to basing my tanks Catachan Green or Eldar Wave Serpents in Blood Red this did the job I needed it do. That's about it, it did make a mess getting it ready. I soon learned to mix in the jar with a stick and watering down metallic paints to go through it was a terrible idea because it separated.
Ok for primer, single colour base coats or terrain. Have a 350 and rarely use it because atomisation is pretty rough. Syphon feed need 30+ psi so using a can was a bad idea.
That's a wash down gun, meant to spray cleaning agents, purple power, mineral spirits, etc. Yes. They CAN be used to spray a simple base coat but no not its real intended function. Someone knew a little about something and tried turning it into something else...seems to be common in gw lol
I remember this coming out. It always felt like more time was spent trying to make it look like a hand flamer for cool points rather than making it actually work well.,
I saw these for sale at my local hobby store a few years ago. I was just getting into airbrushing for Gundams and was kind of morbidly curious, although I never actually purchased it. To be honest, prior to about 2016 there was virtually no consistent information on using airbrushes for miniature painting. At least not for free online. I had to figure a lot of stuff out by trial and error. Or look into tips from other hobbies like diorama modelers (technically a different hobby) or even airbrush make-up and t-shirt artists. Or order a book which might have outdated information. I can really see the appeal of GW releasing a product that is aimed towards people who want an airbrush for base coating, but don't want to shell out $200+ on a brush and compressor. The weird thing is that, functionally, it kind of eats into the same space as their spray paint basecoat range. This might have come out before they released their colored spray paints, so it could have been filling a market niche.
Good point, and it’s something I do touch on in the video. The amount of online ‘support’ out there these days is so much stronger than it used to be. It’s understandable that some people might not have had the knowledge or confidence to try ‘real’ airbrushing.
@@BenjisHobbies I believe that GW exclusively had white/grey/black rattle can primers at the time. I'm pretty sure the colored primers came after this airbrush came out. So if you wanted to easily basecoat your army a single color other than those, this was a reasonable budget option. This was also when they were marketing Foundation paint as being primer + basecoat. I think it's a product that filled a niche in their catalogue at a very specific period in time that has aged bizarrely.
I purchased this the day it came out. I really liked it for basecoating. The new foundation paints they had released along with this worked really well.
I remember when I first got into the hobby I entered a gw store in Tennessee. One of the store workers told me this tool was essential to begin painting, so I bought it.... I haven´t even opened the box in about 10 years. I feel betrayed.
Didn’t have this exact one. But I did have a Badger 350 that I used for years when I was a kid. I didn’t have an airbrush compressor. But I had the spare tire valve adapter. Used to just “power up” the tire with a bike pump and I could happily spray for at least an hour if I was efficient. Those were such blissfully simple times.
I did use one of these back in the day for base coating minis in color as this was before GW sold color primers. Did a fine job base coating mini as it was intended to do 😊. And it shaped like a hand flamer 🔥🔥🤘🏻
The problem with it is the same problem you face with any single action airbrush. They are a high flow, high pressure- basing tool. You can’t adjust the flow on the spot like you can a double action and the high pressure means that detail work is almost impossible. Wouldn’t mind using this for terrain though
Got one when they came out. Took a lot of arm twisting. Was a cheap alternative to an airbrush at the time. But yeah inconsistent results when trying certain colors. Did great with my valkyrie and immolator though. Used it about 4 times. Hose was cheap, and huge waste of paint. Which i think me storing a custom mix is ehy i stopped using it lol. Barely use my actual airbrush ingot many moons later though so.
These brushes are based on the old Badger air brushes which actually work well, but as you say it IS a single action airbrush. It was never meant to be a detail brush. I started using one of these in the mid 1960's; it was also supplied with a can of air. I actually keep one around so I don't shoot certain types of paint through a good airbrush (like a H & S Infinity) and clog it up. These work really well for clear coats and large areas like dioramas and terrain. They DO spray paint like a fire hose, so keep this in mind. I have several airbrushes, each with a specific range of tasks that it works best at. I still do use a brush to pick out certain details. Use the correct tool for the correct job and don't complain about results if you don't. Using one of these for detail work is like using an atom bomb to kill a mosquito, just don't try it! It's overkill.
If I remember correctly, about 3 month after it’s released it had to be recalled, I head the pipes could burst under pressure. The rereleased it later with a fixed version.
I didn't have one but the biggest turn off would have been the compressed air cans. £5 a pop no thanks. Dial me in a half decent compressor. For what it's worth it seems to have done the job but doesn't have the flexibility of a proper airbrush with multiple needles etc so you're probably better off going all in on an actual airbrush than something half arsed like this.
Seems to be based on Badger 350 airbrush with that clumsy gun part added. Badger 350 is solid airbrush if you paint bigger objects like model tanks and cars, or use it to basecoat minis. I bought 350 as my first airbrush about 23 years ago and still use it when basecoating bigger minis or lot's of minis at once. Goes without saying that compressor is the way to go no matter what kind of airbrush you use. Great thing in 350 is that it is very easy to clean compared to double action airbrushes.
I have similar type of airbrush that goes inside that thing, You control amount of paint by tightening this angled knob-nozzle-thingy that sucks paint.
I bought something similar from a local art supply store about 3 years ago. I paid about $25 USD for it and it worked once. The video is pretty indicative of my experience.
Have never used an airbrush and likely never will. Not because I don't like them but because I paint so infrequently I will never justify the cost. But to honest when this came out I loved it for base coating my miniatures. Air brushes weren't even really a thing as far as I'm aware and so I wouldn't even have contemplated using it to paint a miniature. Essentially for base coating models in whatever coulour you liked I liked it. Never had any trouble at all.
Anyone with a background in airbrushing is shouting at the screen, "put the compressed air in a bowl of warm water!" its what you had to do before you could afford a compressor
I still own one of these. Its more nostalgia on what a sucker I was for GW named stuff when I was a teenager. Used it once, it was a spray gun, ill give it that, but my craft table at the time was painted with a more consistent flat black than the Leman Russ I was trying to base coat with the thing. So I cleaned it out and never attempted to use it again.
I had a Badger airbrush that this was based on... needles to say my younger self lost interest and pocket money was more likely to be spent on a White Dwarf than a tin of compressed air that was only available in Beatties locally.
I still have mine used a lot back in the day for base coating things when I lived in an apartment in a cold rainy climate where I had a hard time finding the space to use a spray can. It did the job but was a MESS in the end and yeah wasteful with paint. They stopped selling the air-cans in my area pretty quickly though so that was the end of this for me. It now just collects dust and is mocked by my Airbrush.
@@BenjisHobbies Honestly never really needed it, and is just went into a big pile of never opened boxes. I was inspired recently by SprayBlack to use an airbrush for Grimdark style Blood Angels, and I figured I might as well either use it or throw it out... ended up doing both!
Doesn’t look anywhere near as bad as the GW hobby vice… And if it’s just a Badger reskin then it’s probably pretty good at what Badger designed it to do…
I think you made it look better than it probably was, because of experience and proper preparation. If it had a gravity feeder, that alone would have made it much more functional (but that didn't go with cans of 'propellant.' Yeah that's pretty bad tech! Especially for the time period. I used a can-based propellant on airbrushes not after 1987, when I joined the military! It was near-dead tech then!
You’re quite possibly right! Before I used it I had watched all the (limited) videos out there on it and read several forums and reviews. I’m probably more clued up than a lot of people that had one when they came out!
I don't even know the story about the Imperial Primer but the last time I used it, it worked kinda alright. Then again, nowadays, I would rather use Stynylrenz.
I think if these had just been marketed as basecoat tools, and GW had maybe done something like sold bottles of their more common basecoat/undercoat colours in special bottles that accepted the sprayer nozzle or their own properly sealed lid, they could have been more viable. But the reliance on the propellant was the real killer for the most part IMO, because it's going to cool down. And ultimately a cheap airbrush and compressor would have been cheaper long-term, though from what I can tell cheap compressors back then were almost universally awful.
one of the main draws for this back in the day was not having any spray paint other than white or black. sometimes you got limited runs of sprays but they became gold once they stopped selling them
Had one of these. With no airbrush experience I had major issues getting a consistency that worked. Mess was a huge problem as you mentioned but there was another problem that surprising didn't come up for you. When I washed the pot the measurement markings washed right off. Did exactly the same on my friends one too.
i am cursed to have owned one of these heresys. it never worked. The paint came out in in large drops or not at all, no tweeking could make it spray a fine mist of paint.
I won one of these at a local GW store for a painting contest, It's still in the packaging because I never had plans to use an airbrush or anything, but now 10 years later I'm actually thinking it would work great for large terrain pieces with an adapter like you used. If I ever manage to get myself a game table, I'll probably abuse this thing to do all the basecoating, but for now it stays out of sight
This product seems really useful to me. I just need something to base coat my minis inside, and an airbrush seems unnecessarily complicated just for that. Is there any products like this still available?
I bought one but never used it. I expected a full kit with everything included. Since the delivery was just the gun I never used it. Eventually just trashed it when I moved.
This came out when I was starting to lose interest in warhammer. When I saw it on the shelves at the local gw I hoped it would make paonting faster and would bring back joy for the hobby. A staff member told me to not even think about buying it because it sucked so bad...
The only real problem is the marketing behind it. All the issues are the same you would get from a cheap single action airbrush. My first "brush" was a badger 200 series, this is very similar. I found all the same issues and quickly got a set with compressor and chinese brush for massive improvement. 10+ years on I now have a hs evolution which is again a step in quality and control.
I had one of these, and I don't recall it having any instructions for maintenance and proper usage - it got clogged up pretty quickly and that seemed to be the end of it. I'm pretty sure that's what gave me my aversion to using an airbrush.
Yeh, there weren’t any instructions with mine. I didn’t have any clogging but I can see that potentially being an issue. Don’t let it put you off an airbrush though - they’re god-tier tools for the hobby!
It was my first airbrush, and I still have the paint bottles floating around. I've been using them as painting handles for years. It worked well enough for basecoating, just needed to be on a compressor because the propellant cans were trash.
I was given something like that for a B'day present. The same design but not GW so they were out there way back when. I could not get it to work though I did not understand the premise of thinning paint at the time and the product had no instructions. So GW probably were not even the designers of their release but just another copy.
I wonder if you could take a modern siphon airbrush and just fit the coolflamer body around it. Honestly they’d be worth buying just to go “haha look at this cool flamer paint gun I have”
I really wanted one of these back in the day. not only was air-brushes stupid expensive and hard to get, i have never had a good hand with rattle cans. But i never found the right time or place to get one and in hindsight i am happy. But i am looking at getting one of it´s spiritual successors. The usb charged hand held compressors. They suck but i live in a small apartment and my neighbors would most likely have me yeeted if a ran a full on compressor.
A full on airbrush compressor runs at just under 50dB, I run mine while people watch TV in another room in the same house without complaint, you'll be fine unless your neighbours are super sensitive to sound and are prone to unhinged outbursts.
This tool is not so bad but it needs to be upgraded. Coupled with a true compressor, and only used for terrain. So useless for what it was supposed to be used. 😅
I remember being told by the blue fleece to only use it on Terrain pieces when I bought it, I only really purchased it for the novelty of having something look like a hand flamer.
I had considered it when I was looking for something that I could use for big models, terrain and priming. When I was looking at it in my friendly neiborhood hobby shop, the clerk there said that I would be happier with the Testors Aztek A220. It was cheaper and easier to clean when finished. Plus it came with an adaptor for a compressor. He was right.
oh wade! i remember chatting to him on world eaters phpbbs back in the day… that haircut was never cool, man, regardless of your opinion of avril lavigne
I owned one of these. I still have the drop pod I tried to basecoat with it lol. I tried it once, it sat in my garage for a few months, then threw it out.
