Regs are pretty cheap and you should invest in one. What psi are you trying to shoot at? Typical range is 10 - 28 psi and I've never seen a reg personally that couldn't do this as all it does is restrict the airflow so if it can stop it all the way, it should be able to do whatever and not necessarily read such. Hell mine is shattered and covered in layers of paint so I don't even use the guage part. I still stand by you can't adjust air with a partial depress as an iwata nor any airbrush that i know of doesn't do that because of the design, it's a plunger open close mechanism, not a variable regulator that slowly opens and shuts. But if you think that it is working and it's helping you then go for it, I just think you are making it a million times harder on yourself. Kind of a trying to get drunk with non alcoholic beer kinda thing imo
. Sure you can actually get drunk on it because it actually has minute amounts, but would have to drink cases of it when you could just buy a high proof and get the job done quick and efficiently.
My reg is just a basic model from Home Depot. I think it's meant more for air tools like socket wrenches and nail guns, so precision was sacrificed in the name of economy. Lessee... it is a "Husky HDA70500AV". I'm still finding my sweet spot pressure wise, but with the .35 tip/needle I currently favor the 10-15psi range. The .5 seems to like in the 15-20 range. With my current reg, I can do 10 or 15 or 20, but I can't control the range in between hardly at all.
A better reg would probably cost more or less the same as a MAC valve, but like I say: if I'm going to be using the air valve on/off fashion, think I want a MAC anyway to keep that control in hand rather than having to pause to adjust the regulator.
The Iwata air valve can definitely do graduated air flow. It's just very tricky because the useful travel is very short (which is why I was pinching the trigger, and why I wanted a softer spring. It is kind of nice to know this isn't how it's intended to be used, as previously I had been thinking that the short travel and on/off feel was a design flaw.
I am definitely making it at least an order of magnitude harder on myself, but I'm not yet convinced it's for no benefit. I think it may be like automatic vs manual transmission: manual seems like an unnecessary pain in the arse to people who learned on an automatic, and even if they learn it, they still prefer to avoid it unless necessary. Manual is a huge pain in the ass to learn, but people who learn to drive that way from the beginning don't experience it as an inconvenience the way automatic drivers do, because it's fully integrated into their reflexes and habits.
So when I hear/read things like your alcohol metaphor, a part of me sees maybe an automatic driver trying to convince a student driver not to bother with learning stick.
It may not pan out in the long run, but I've already spent formative practice time taking it for granted that controlling air with the trigger was normal and something everyone learned. While I now know that's not the case, I don't have a prejudicial conviction that it's too difficult or not worth it that might come from learning the "correct" way from the get go. The opposite, in fact: I can definitely see that it's possible, and it definitely has utility. It's difficult, but I've had to learn difficult things before, so I know that "hard to learn" isn't the same as "hard to do".
Squishy said:
If you are not wanting to get as much air out, then just lower your pressure and adjust your paint to suit. Lower air pressure and thinner paint may mean more passes to get the intensity you want, but you will have much greater control, and more subtlety to your work. And it will stop you making the common mistake of going too dark too fast. If you do want a higher pressure at some point during a painting then a quick tweak of the reg is going to be more reliable than trying to hover somewhere between the two - if it even has the desired effect.
I'm not too sure what effect it could have in your freehand ability. Once you have a paintflow/psi you are happy with, thickness of lines, etc is more determined by distance, and mastering different strokes is more about trigger control, and combining those to get the effect you want. Without adjusting the thickness of your paint, more air will likely cause spidering, and probably a lot of unwanted overspray, and less air will cause a grainy look (good if you want a rough texture like stone etc) and hamper the paint flow, maybe even causing a blockage. Building up of tones and shading is best done gradually, so a set lower pressure = a slower build=more control.
The issue of a regulator being more reliable would in theory be negated by fluency, in much the same way a needle stop is often cited as being negated by fluency. The main difference is that the air valve has shorter travel than the needle, making finer coordination needed, but my "incorrect" practice experiences have given me proof of concept.
My general idea is to make brush operation as fully an extension of my body as possible, so that once fluent I don't have to interrupt or detach myself. Like... the difference between flying like a bird and flying like a man flipping switches in a cockpit? There's probably terms in interface design for what I'm thinking of, I'll have to look it up. I want to be able to vary that stuff either within a single stroke, or without having interrupt myself with a trip to the regulator (even if it's right next to me, it's still an interruption; even a MAC valve would be to some degree, compared to just moving your fingers like you do for paint). Same principle as being able to do dagger strokes with a double action vs simple strokes with a single action, just in a different/additional axis, as it were. Again: I've already found this is possible, it's just a matter of developing the muscle memory to exploit it. The useful range before the paint reduction starts to be a factor is maybe only 5psi or so (maybe 10, depending on tip/needle size and reduction), but it's enough to make a visible difference in the results.
Now that my brain is rolling, I'm wishing I was a machinist, or at least had some machinist's equipment like a metal lathe and mill. While I think my concept might be workable, I can see it definitely isn't what the triggers and valves are designed for ergonomically. I'm finding myself picturing alternate valve/trigger setups that could maybe make it much easier.
