Neo for Iwata airbrush update

neo-iwataAn update on my experience with the Neo for Iwata airbrush I bought almost two years ago and with which I have struggled. Turns out, I’ve been using it upside down, or rather, I’ve been inserting the needle chucking guide (part 7) turned 180° the wrong way, in other words, with the small prong pointing down, not up, as is clearly shown in the instructions, but which I never noticed.

needle-chucking-guide
I inserted this part rotated 180° the wrong way (around the shaft)!

I had complained before of the poor action of the brush, which I have solved simply by inserting the part the correct way round. It now has a lovely action and I have exceedingly fine control of air pressure and paint flow. I can also blow just air to dry what I’ve  painted, which never worked before (a little paint always leaked out).

Another discovery is that I don’t need to thin my paint to the degree I did before, nor do I need to add a drying retarder.

My modeling life has further improved by the realization that shaking paint is EVIL! I’ve switched to one of those paint stirrers (mine is actually a modified cocktail stirrer) and discovered that I’ve never properly dislodged the paint sitting at the bottom of the bottle. An additional benefit of stirring is that paint never contacts the lid to form that cruft around the lip of the bottle. And stirring introduces far less air into the paint, causing it to flow far more easily through an airbrush.

 

Leave a Reply to Jennifer Petkus Cancel reply

%d bloggers like this: