Wold Model "M"

DaveG

Airbush Analyst
This one - (a Wold Model M) - did not come with any documentation, or a case for that matter. Still, it has to be considered to be in the neighborhood of 100 years old. A little brass showing through here and there, some of the serrations and details damaged, but overall condition is pretty good.

Wold Model M.jpg

External mix double action brush. It could be used as either a side feed (shown with color cup installed) or with a siphon feed bottle attached to the bottom port. After a careful disassembly - took me a while to figure this one out, as there is a guide rod where one would normally think to find the needle in a brush, as well as a mechanism tying trigger movement to the actual needle movement - a good cleaning was in order. There was not a ton of paint, but rather what looked like dried out oil, caked in dirt, and just age packed in the brush.

My first attempts at using the brush were interesting. The brush, while being rather large in stature, is quite stingy with paint. Atomization is a bit course; better after some additional needle, nozzle cleaning, and polishing - and, may yet improve further with a little more restoration work on the front end of the brush. It does however work, and works well enough to be considered for use as is.

Wold Model M spray test1.jpg

Really interesting, early piece, and a welcome addition to my collection.
 
Thats a beautiful piece. and it sprays which is even better. Did you have to make any parts for it?


Lee
 
Thats a beautiful piece. and it sprays which is even better. Did you have to make any parts for it?


Lee
All I have done so far is to clean it up - a DEEP clean up. I removed the fiber air valve seal, and replaced it with an o-ring (the original was not holding air). I have also had to clean up the needle tip which was a little rough looking, and burnished the nozzle edges with a brass rod while turning. The nozzle may need a little more work, and the alignment of the parts at the front of the brush may need some very minor tweaking - the nozzle sits just a hair off center in the air channel.
 
Fascinating brush. The way the external mix is combined with double action has a weird combo of looking both intuitive, yet Rube Goldberg. Overcomplicated and probably fiddly AF, but at the same time I can relate the "anatomy" directly to my model H, and thus immediately see how to use it.

I'm surprised the air fitting appears to be compatible with a modern 1/8 connector, given the age of the brush. Or did you have to make a part for that like with the rOtring?
 
Fascinating brush. The way the external mix is combined with double action has a weird combo of looking both intuitive, yet Rube Goldberg. Overcomplicated and probably fiddly AF, but at the same time I can relate the "anatomy" directly to my model H, and thus immediately see how to use it.

I'm surprised the air fitting appears to be compatible with a modern 1/8 connector, given the age of the brush. Or did you have to make a part for that like with the rOtring?

Honestly, the clever design of the brush makes it very easy to set up, and use. I don't think I would call this one fiddly to use. Color changes are a bit of a chore, as what they refer to as the "ink well" in the front of the brush has lots of nooks and crannies for pigment to hide in. It's true double action makes it a far more versatile brush than something like the Model H. For me, the only drawback is it's physical size - it is a large brush, for sure. There is another version, the Model N, that is smaller, more normal sized, that features the same sort of needle/nozzle set up - would LOVE to find one, but they are rare as hens teeth these days.

Most of the Wolds, Thayer Chandler, and Badger brushes share the same size (M5x.5mm) air valve threading. Unfortunately, this one, as well as the Wold Master, and the Thayer Chandler Model B, and C brushes used a proprietary thread, and I had to make the QC fitting to fit.
 
Yeah, when I said "fiddly", I was thinking of disassembly and cleaning. I'd expect the act of spraying to be more or less the same as a modern double action. The comparison to a model H was more about the nozzle/head anatomy in relation to the Venturi effect of spraying/atomizing. I can see it uses a linkage of some kind inside the body connected to the trigger to slide/rock the needle arm back and forth. It's a weird hybrid that looks like it'd have too many moving parts relative to a "normal" double action.

Doesn't surprise me that the paint path is fussier to clean. In my (admittedly limited) experience, side feeds require a little more attention in that area than gravity feeds*, and my model H has a surprising amount of nooks and crannies in the nozzle/needle assembly that make it kinda worse than you'd expect. Fit and finish make a big difference too: my Micron and my SOTAR are both side feed, but the Micron is much easier to clean because of better plating and wider passages.

*Can't speak to bottom feed, as my experience there is even more limited.
 
Just to give a bit more background - the brush design itself dates back to the very earliest of brushes - somewhere around the first 20 years or so, of the very first airbrush (maybe 25...). It was one of the first designs that had the trigger placed outside the ink well itself, with the intention of making the brush easier to keep clean. I would estimate this one to have been built within about 30 years of the very first brushes.

The fact that it still works... amazing.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top