Need help with my new airbrush

[stram8777]

This is what happened. I was starting my tamiya light tank and decided to try out my new airbrush. It is a testors the $20 special from wal-mart. sprayed the hull first and it turned out pretty good, and i was happy. But i ran out of paint. so i mix up another batch and start to spray the other peices of armor and it was so runny the paint ran right off the parts! Now before you say anything i mixed both batches the same way and i don't know what happened. I wasted an entire bottle of olive drab paint on the second batch.

any way i guess my point is this can someone give me some extensive hints for airbrushing or point me to a web-site that has some information? any help is appreciated.

thanks

[VF-19]

Well... You did mention runny paint, so I would suspect that you either layed the paint on too thick or you thinned the paint too much. I had a problem with runny paint once, and that was because I thinned it too much.

The other thing is to wait for the paint to dry fully. Sometimes the half-dried paint may run when you put a new layer of paint...

[David Hingtgen]

Airbrushing is affected by the barometer, time of day, wind speed, wind direction, time until the vernal equinox, and various planetary alignments.

In other words, mixing it up drop-by-drop identical to a batch you did yesterday, or even an hour before, will not guarantee success. Always, always test out a newly-mixed batch on scrap plastic.

Also, overthinning is 100x more common than underthinning. Add as little as possible, and see if you can get it to spray by adjusting the air/paint flow. Then if you can't, add more thinner. I usually put like 80% of the thinner I think, then add more *if* necessary.

Finally, distance from what you're spraying. The thing I least pay attention to, but may be something to watch for. Every inch is a BIG difference.

Post-finally: did you stir everything really well? Stirred paint is thicker than paint that's sat. And did you still the thinner into the paint well? I've never said to myself "I stirred it too much", but many times it wasn't stirred enough.