Welcome back Hobby Maniacs! Today Kenny from Next Level Painting is going to show us some simple methods for combatting those pesky airbrush clogs!
Everyone hates airbrush clogs! They make the paint speckle your brand new model, ruining hours of painstaking work! Sometimes they even stop your airbrush from working at all! Today Kenny is going to walk us through a couple of simple tricks to combat those pesky clogs!
Up first is the NUMBER ONE source of all airbrushing problems! The Brass needle cap! Paint just loves to hang out in there despite all your best efforts! To solve this, Kenny recommends regularly removing the brass cap, and using some solvent and a combination of a pipe cleaner and an old airbrush needle (or your current one if you’re careful!). You should be able to coax out all the paint fairly easily using this combination!
What solvent you may ask? Kenny recommends none other than gold old Hoppes #9 gun cleaner! This combination solvent/oil both cleans and lubricated the parts of your airbrush, leaving it squeaky clean and ready for the next project every time!
A great tool for combatting clogs is to ensure that your paint is thoroughly mixed and thinned down enough to move through your brush properly. A great trick to help ensure your paint is ready is to utilize the air from the brush itself to do some of the mixing for you! By pulling the needle back (to ensure you neither stab yourself or worse, bend the needle!) and gently applying the air, you can cause a back flow to move up the brush and out through the paint cup. This is kind of like blowing bubbles in your chocolate milk as a kiD, but potentially much much messier!
Last but certainly not least! Paint cant dry if its always wet! Kenny likes to store his airbrush in a medium sized shot glass with a mixture of water, simple green and Hoppes #9! This ensures that no paint is able to dry in any of those hard to reach places like the needle cap!
Check out the whole video below for more great Airbrushing tips!
