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Showing results for tags 'airbrush stand'.
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An airbrush is absolutely one of those DOH! tools and I'm loving the cheapo Master kit I bought off Amazon for a mere $80. Well, I love the cute-as-shit gutless compressor, but not the airbrush so much. Instead I've matched the compressor with a cheapo Harbor Freight airbrush that I've owned for years but never used because (a) I didn't have a particular reason to use it and (b) I thought it was going to be yet another difficult set of skills to master, like hand sewing was, and tooling, and edging, and burnishing....and just about every damn little thing there is to know and master when it comes to leather working. But that all changed . Over the past however many months I've become a big fan, a green-with-envy covetous voyeur of Boriqua's finish work. It's to dye for, as they say. Finishes so gorgeous it hurts your eyes to look at them. His finishes are like gambling in Vegas. Once experienced, you are not the slightest bit impressed with some hokey ass river gambling boat or even the biggest small town, Reno and its hick schtick. Nothing will ever measure up... not even close. I finally cornered him one day and asked him point blank: "What's up with those finishes you're churning out Pops?," ya know, in that intimidating street tough kinda way. Sure enough he gives me the Clueless-Old-Guy Routine: "Aw shucks, I dunno? Just lucky I guess." But then he slipped and mentioned he was using an airbrush. I KNEW IT! It wasn't Voodoo after all. It wasn't even alchemy. It was just a special tool...one that anybody could purchase and I already had one......which I couldn't hook up to my pancake nail gun compressor because I needed fittings and an air hose and those little bottle thingys not to mention all the research time to figure it all out.....OR I could just buy my way in. $80 was a bargain. So I get my kit and I let it set for a day or two to mentally prepare myself to devote the big blocks of time it's going to take to learn how to do this airbrush stuff. And on that day I spent several hours unpacking it, clearing a spot on the workbench and building a little rack for the little bottles and filling the bottles, then labeling the bottles, then making a little holder where each bottle is secured and safe from accidentally being knocked over. Just dancing around and around and not actually doing anything with the airbrush until there were no more tasks left but to hook the damn thing up. And that was all straight forward enough -- hook up the hose, attach a bottle with some liquid in it, turn on the compressor, adjust the PSI.....and that's when I had to set the airbrush down so I could use both hands for concentration, and that makes no sense at all but we all do it to take focus on an important task -- put down the beer, put out the smoke, stop voices from talking to you with the universal traffic cop Stop hand gesture. And when I went to set the ever-so-delicate airbrush down on the bench I quickly discovered how unwieldly it is once out of your protective hands. What with the front loaded up with a bulky glass bottle full of liquid and tilted at an odd angle and the back saddled with an uncooperative, fully compressed air hose, the little guy instantly flopped over hard on its side and cleaning fluid begin leaking out out of its orifices. Oh no, this won't do. This won't do at all. I need a proper stand for this special unit. The piece of crap metal holder thingy that it came with was... well it was in the trash. So I spent the rest of the day making the coolest and cutest little airbrush stand you've ever seen using copper tubing (another medium I work with and get some really interesting results). Yeah, hours and hours I spent on this thing, not the fabrication part but rather the hours upon hours of legos/lincoln logs iteration design time because I have every friggin' copper fitting there is from 1/2" to 3/4" and a decent inventory of 1" on up and you have to try out all the combinations. The next day I finally give it a whirl and right off the bat I got that DOH! feeling. You see, the funny thing about this whole "airbrush club" dealeo is I already knew how to operate an airbrush. You do too. All the mystique that surrounds airbrushing is a a bunch of elitist hooey. I never read this in any review and nobody ever mentioned the obvious as hell example that I'm going to tell you and it will completely demystify how to paint or dye with an airbrush. Ready? It's just like painting with a can of spray paint except that you pull back instead of push down. That's it. To be honest, I'm a little disappointed it wasn't harder. And yeah, I should have started using one years ago. Hey, if all your do is spray solid colors, you'll save a ton of money on supplies because using cloths and daubers is very wasteful. An airbrush lays down exactly what you need and where you need it with half or less as many coats and without all the streaking issues etc. Get one as soon as your can. Consider it part of the basic tool kit.
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- airbrush tool caddy
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