Lurking in Cambridgeshire

A

[amw]

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Hello!

I've been gathering advice from this forum for a good while and thought it might only be polite to say hello.

A little while ago I got a rather nasty cheapo airbrush from screwfix (like this ) to 'have a go'. I was quite impressed that it did anything at all :) Given it costs 25 quid or so it's not so bad.

What I then did was buy a gravity-feed Royalmax from ebay. A less good idea - it didn't work well, leaked and required a lot of fiddling to get it to do anything. It showed just enough of a glimmer of possibility to convince me that gravity-feed might be the way to go, but in every other way was a disaster.

I then had a stroke of luck and stumbled across an aincient Iwata HP-C on ebay for not much money. Suffice to say it was a bit crusty and looked like it hadn't been used for decades. Some careful cleaning and lubrication later, plus butchering a hose to fit onto its hose-barb, it worked! Suffice to say that even a dog-old Iwata is better than a Royalmax... it has good atomisation! it has a round pattern! and it doesn't leak!!!

Anyway, I now have an airbrush that works like an airbrush is supposed to, sadly my skills are still non-existant, but that will come if I manage to stick with it (at least a bit!).
 
Welcome home and yes sometime the cheap airbrushes work great and people love them other times they don't But that old Iwata will last you a long time. Now that you have a good airbrush practice should go smoother so practice those dots , dagger strokes and fades and before long you will be painting skulls or flowers which every you like best :D
 
Welcome! You made the right choice with the Iwata available for a good price, congratulations. Hope you enjoy your time here.
 
Welcome to the forum, Just seen your thread about spectra-tex so I've added a bit of info there. You might want to get yourself a quick disconnect for the HP-C it will make things a little easier than using a hose on the barb fitting. Then you can use a standard 1/8th fitting hose. If you search for inline mac valves you should find which is best.

Lee
 
Welcome from Australia,
Nice find with the Eclipse, a great all round workhorse of a brush. WHEN you decide you need parts for it (needle/nozzle if you drop it) then make sure you get the right parts. I'm not 100% certain if they've changed the model slightly over the years but I ordered parts for my HP-B+ and received parts for a HP-B (earier model) and they didnt fit. Thankfully it was a supplier error and parts were marked wrong and I had no issue changing them over.

Just something to keep in the back of your head for future purchases.

Yes, I agree with Jordo, switch that barb fitting out
 
Welcome to Mitchs madhouse, Glad you decided to pop In and do an introduction as you see it helps us help you in your quest a lot faster then lurking in the shadows!:thumbsup::thumbsup:
 
Thanks all for your great welcome.

For those who might be interested I found a photo of the old HP-C:

DSCF5486._smalljpg.jpg

and the hacking I had to do to my host to get it to work:

DSCF5492_small.jpg


When I got the brush the needle cap was stuck on. This wasn't a big problem, but (obviously) limits how close you can get and also doesn't work too well when using a fully open trigger. Anyway it was well and truly stuck on, eventually I got brave and *very carefully* used some pliers and a little heat to get it off. The cap now has a little brassing, but hey, it was cheap!
 
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Thanks all for your great welcome.

For those who might be interested I found a photo of the old HP-C:

View attachment 55367

and the hacking I had to do to my host to get it to work:

View attachment 55368


When I got the brush the needle cap was stuck on. This wasn't a big problem, but (obviously) limits how close you can get and also doesn't work too well when using a fully open trigger. Anyway it was well and truly stuck on, eventually I got brave and *very carefully* used some pliers and a little heat to get it off. The cap now has a little brassing, but hey, it was cheap!


You need to get yourself one of these;

41135-l.gif

your current set up looks decidedly dodgy, an accident waiting to happen, you can find it here https://airbrushes.com/product_info.php?cPath=400_14_412_158&products_id=1181
 
No, I need to get myself part 15 from here, which is an air-valve body with a 1/8" connection rather than a hose barb; I can then connect things in a better way.

As an aside, I know that hose looks bad, but at the pressures I am using it at (10 - 30 psi) it isn't a problem, plus it is only connected my compressor with a tiny, low pressure, reserviour, so there is little potential for destruction.
 
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No, I need to get myself part 15 from here, which is an air-valve body with a 1/8" connection rather than a hose barb; I can then connect things in a better way.

As an aside, I know that hose looks bad, but at the pressures I am using it at (10 - 30 psi) it isn't a problem, plus it is only connected my compressor with a tiny, low pressure, reserviour, so there is little potential for destruction.

So is the air valve you have stuck in that hose damaged or threaded, even if you get a new valve you still need the barb to be able to connect and disconnect from your brush, although most us have a quick release set with quick release barb on the brush.
 
So is the air valve you have stuck in that hose damaged or threaded, even if you get a new valve you still need the barb to be able to connect and disconnect from your brush, although most us have a quick release set with quick release barb on the brush.

Nope. The air-valve in the picture has a hose-barb right on the bottom - an integral part! So I carefully screw the hose+valve and the brush together before use - like the opposite of quick disconnect :) So to fix this I have to buy a whole new air valve - one with a threaded connection! I did say my HP-C was quite old...
 
Nope. The air-valve in the picture has a hose-barb right on the bottom - an integral part! So I carefully screw the hose+valve and the brush together before use - like the opposite of quick disconnect :) So to fix this I have to buy a whole new air valve - one with a threaded connection! I did say my HP-C was quite old...

I see, the whole set up looks strange and cumbersome, I've never seen such an arrangement, I'm working with an HP-B which going by the box in your your picture is as old as yours is but the valve came attached to the brush with the 1/8th male thread, all I would have needed would have been the the barb with 1/8th female thread pictured above but I opted for a Harder & Steenbeck hose with integrated micro air control instead, this is how it all looks;

20180509_162036.jpg
I don't use the pistol grip filter anymore, it causes problems and if I have moisture I can see it in the hose.
 
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