Airbrush Booth - What Do You Use?

[TomG]

For those of you who use an airbrush, what do you use to put your piece on to spray? I need to redo the way I've done it in the past.

One guy I met a few years ago, built a square box about 3 feet long and 2 feet high, put a piece of wire mesh on the front with hooks to hold the piece vertical. He had a fan and filter in the back to exhaust the overspray.

Nice if you have the room, which a lot of us don't have.

Pictures?

Thanks

[silverback]

Hi Tom, I haven't made mine yet but I am thinking of using an old clothes dryer.Rip the door off and strip out as much as possible then place a shelf and some hooks in there.i should be able to use the existing ducting but put a smaller and quieter fan on the back.This is project number 92 and I may get around to it by mid year .Possibly a fridge or something similar could be used as well.

Peter.

[lightingale]

Since our house burned down, my studio "space" and equipment has been a bit limited. I don't have any ventilation right now (and I have the headaches to verify that), but I spray on my workbench on a piece of cardstock or cardboard that I switch out when it gets too much dye on it. You'll want something slightly absorbent to put your project on (particularly if you're airbrushing along the edges), so if your project slides, you don't get streaks of dye rubbing onto it.

We might have the opportunity to rebuild at some point, and I would put together something like a chemist's fumehood for airbrush work and other potentially toxic endeavors (like soldering lead for stained glass). Very basically, it's like your stove's vent in a box (with a light, an electrical plug, and a clear vertical sliding door that you can lower so just your arms fit into it).

You mentioned in your other thread that your airbrush is hard to use because it got gunky. You should get comfortable with taking it apart to clean (and take pictures so you remember how to put it back together). You can get solutions to dissolve the crap on it, and afterwards, assuming the needle isn't damaged, it should work as good as new. Since I'm cheap, I just use Fiebing's dye reducer to clean it (I got a huge jug of the stuff for diluting dyes and cleaning brushes), and it seems to work as well as the expensive airbrush-specific cleaner (I only use solvent-based dyes in it, which might help in the cleaning department).

Edited January 2, 2014 by lightingale

[Cyberthrasher]

Google "airbrush hood system", "airbrush spray booth", "home made airbrush ventilation". There are LOTS of good ideas out there.

For myself and my limited space, I'm planning on repairing an old bathroom fan that's sitting there and building a box around it that pipes out my window. Either that, or building a filtered hood system that recycles the air back to the room by using a high CFM fan sucking the air up into a large filter.

Something like this:

http://www.coastairbrush.com/proddetail.asp?prod=FAN9900&cat=18

[OdinUK]

I have limited space do I just use a cardboard box with a bathroom extraction fan with a flexible pipe That I hang out of the window if I use sprit or oil dyes. If using acrics I make sure the filter is fitted to the fan and stuff an old tshirt in the end of the tube. I only do that if im not spraying much, otherwise I hang the tube out of the window.

The filter I use is a loose weave dish cloth folded over a couple of times. Its quite effective.

[Bigfoot]

I made this unit to fit in the corner of my bench out of thick cardboard which works well and is strong enough to hang items from on wire hooks when needed, the extractor mounted at the back i have ducted out through the wall. I have found that hessian sacks make a good/cheap disposable filter and you can use as many layers as needed.

Resolene (if you use it) still really sticks to the blades on the extractor over time so make sure you can get to the fan when it needs cleaning!

[TomG]

What's a hessian sack?

Good job painting the cat

[camano ridge]

They are pretty much like a burlap gunny sack.