I just tried out a newly acquired airbrush set and paint station with fan and air filter – both were on sale from Amazon. The airbrush with compressor was $59 USD – so couldn’t pass it up. I also ordered a set of Vallejo airbrush acrylics – also on sale – about $30 for 16 bottles. The primary use for the airbrush was to apply camo to German armor. So – my first attempt was a repaint of an old Tamiya Jagdtiger I had painted green camo stripes on by hand. Never was really satisfied with the results. Immediately after the Jagdtiger, I added camo the Corgi Panther that had been given a coat of dunklegelb. The results for both weren’t total disasters, and learned a lot of how to apply the spray. Namely, hold the airbrush close to the model to reduce unwanted overspray. And also to apply successive light coats rather than single heavy ones. I did the latter a few times as I tend to be impatient.

The lines on the Jagtiger are a little closer than I had wanted – wanted to leave more of the dunklegelb basecoat showing. Also, the green for both tanks is a bit darker than I wanted. I mixed the colors by eye, and rather haphazardly and quickly. The colors looked okay on test paper, but spraying too thickly on the models made the colors darker. I may drybrush dunklegelb over the finishes to lighten it up a little. Otherwise, I’m very happy with the airbrush and paint station. Again, this was my first time using an actual airbrush – the only previous experience was a time or two with those old Testors airbrushes needing a can of compressed air. The few times I used it the airbrush would clog up after a minute or two – leaving me with a barely used can of compressed air.

Here’s what the Tamiya Jagdtiger looked like with hand-painted green stripes. I was able to remove the decals that were on using decal softener – a tip I found on YouTube. The decals were on for several years and came off with little effort.

Here’s the paint station and airbrush with compressor. The paint station has nice LED lights and a small removable turntable. It has a decent fan to suck out overspray and fumes, which aren’t much as I plan to use acrylic water-based paints. The airbrush compressor isn’t much louder (or more powerful) than a good aquarium pump. You can’t hear it over the paint station’s fan anyway. Cleaning up the airbrush between colors and afterwards wasn’t as bad as expected. Just had a dropper and cleaning solution onhand the whole time.

The paint station fan comes with an expandable hose for the exhaust. Since I painted it indoors without venting outside, I placed the end inside of a flower pot. I didn’t notice any residue inside the pot afterwards.