Ricks Test

One way or another Rick we will get you painting. Dave has already offered to check and get your brush working properly so once that problem is out of the way we can work on your technique :D
 
You’ll win in the end then :laugh:, it’s just a frustrating journey in the beginning.
If it’s any consolation my Micron is giving me the :poo: today. I’ve torn it down and the nozzle is having some spa time in restorer for the next hour lol
 
why don't we do that - send me the brush and I will check it out. That way we can eliminate that from the equation. I have heads from the ones I have taken off, so if I need to replace anything I have it all right here... will only take an hour or so... That way when you restart, you will know the brush is ready, and we can eliminate that as a question mark, so that we can just carry on with things. I'll pm my address.
Can I send a virtual high 5 Dave? you deserve one. That's a really kind gesture and eliminating the kit from the questions will be a big help to Rick. Way to spread the love Sir. :thumbsup:
 
Yep. Im stay with it im just as stubborn as you.
I know exactly how you feel Rick. I rebuilt and modified a car when I was in my 20's, it was a full engine removal, swap then upgrade at least 50% of the internals. So there was a lot of trial and error, then fault finding. The point is, I'm not a genius mechanic at all! But I so wanted to learn and of course drive the end result. I would regularly get to the point of something not working, wracking my brains for the answer, fail again and be at the point of setting the thing on fire out of frustration lol. So I'd end up throwing my hands up in the air, walking away and deciding to just sell it as it was and move on. But my stubbornness would always win out and after I had time to cool off I'd find myself thinking about what the problem was and a bunch of things I hadn't yet tried that might work.
It was my stubbornness that got the car finished, not my ability.
So if you really want to improve, keep going, but give yourself a break too. You must have so much going on looking after your Wife and coping with all the stresses and worry, any human being would be exactly the same. So do not beat yourself up for getting frustrated, walk away from the Brush when you have to, but if you want to get this down, just keep going.
 
Rick Being I do know all to well the stress and hardship having a wife with medical needs and bills I can now understand better the place you are in .
Airbrushing for me is my escape But in the beginning I fought the beast call paint and finally won.
90% of the time it is no fault of the airbrush but the fault of the operator. Operator error on reduction of the paint, or having a mind set of how it is suppose to flow and work cause that is what the guy in a video did. The only thing about video learning is I hardly ever see any of them telling you what they reduce at or at least used as a starting point.
That is when A great guy name Ron (on a different forum and who is no longer with us on this planet) told me to play 1 drop.
1 drop of paint , spray look for grainy spray pattern , clean airbrush and then add 1 drop of paint and 1 drop of the recommend reducer , do this untill you have a smooth spray pattern. He also recommended that this be done on a hard surface or something like poster board when it will skate if you get it to thin. All this was done at 35psi
Then when you got it to skate lower the pressure 5 psi at a time to see where you did not skate the paint and where you still had nice even spray pattern.
He said this is how you learn a paint system. No matter if it was waterbased or urethane. due to all paint companies make their paint a little different and reducing for an airbrush is different depending on nozzle size .

It is a struggle as SiRoxx said but if you stay with it and learn the paint you are using it does get easier.
I always use to blame the airbrush but it was I who was not mixing the paint correctly for the desired effect I was trying to do . But trust me one day very soon you will have that ah ha moment when everything works.
Comart is a great paint to learn with . Through a .35 set up I would never have to reduce straight out of the bottle @35 psi, But the lower I would drop the pressure the more grainy the paint would look . The only paint I just no matter what I tried could not get to work for me is the one so many out there love and that is E'tac.

So to let you know about dealing with the stress and hardship part My wife had Colon Cancer , The surgeon who did the colon surgery also took out her Gallbladder and in the process of that cause a condition know as a fistula . It is when a small surgical nick is put in a organ which then opens up causing all kind of hell. In her case it was in the small intestine. and I almost lost her but thanks to looking for a doctor who could fix that she made a good recovery. But that was after 1 year of wound healing it , I had to not only get the kids off to school but change her wound dressing , Hook up and change her meds and fluids in her pic line (IV) but still work a full time job to pay for it all . The home nurse would come by twice a week . Just as soon as we got her well from all that she had a brain tumor on the left side of her brain. This was all with in a 2 year period at a cost of 1.5 million which my part after insurance was 250k I just finished paying that off last year all her surgeries were 11 years ago. Plus she still on meds the rest of her life for brain seizures and is limited on what she can do.
Now how did I buy my airbrush with all that going on I saved in a swear jar cause trust me I was swearing like a sailor on a saturday night .

But you are right on wife and family needs first before hobbies But after trying different mods on airbrush and most of them not working the way others could get them to work I just stick with stock . LOL
But you will get it
 
Thanks everyone for your support. This is what i want to do to escape into my little corner of the world so as fustrating as it can be i will continue with it.
 
See Rick, you are not alone :) there are many here with similar stories of home/health vs hobby for sanity. I’ve seen the reaper and still have ongoing issues but thankfully not to the degree of some here. After I first started I was forced away from physical painting for a year+. Had a couple of attempts over the next 12 months and finally after just over 2 years I was finally able to start trying properly.
If you want a new brush badly enough you will put away penny’s each week until you can make it happen. Occcasionaly there is a guardian angel that helps where they can (like @DaveG) others offer moral support and try and inject some humour along the way to make the troubles a little more bearable.

Keep at it Rick, we’ve got your back :D
 
Hell yeah we've got your back Rick. As you know I don't have much to offer in terms of advice, but I've got moral support and sympathy in spades lol. I've just spent an hour trying to get Wiked Red to flow and another 45 mins trying to get a new needle to seat properly lol. So I've learnt that Red needed a lot more reducer than I first thought and if I replace a needle, it's probably best to replace the nozzle too [emoji3]. Trust me, there was a lot of swearing involved!


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Herb, we have a lot in common. My wife fell and broke her hip a few years back, has seizures and takes meds for that, has had 2 major back surgeries and as of now can only stand up for just a few minutes at a time. She is either in bed or in a recliner all day.
As for me, I had to have a leg amputated when I was 58 but after 6 months went back to work as a electrician and worked until I could retire early. During the hospital stay ( 1 month ) I told the doctor that I wanted a colostomy because I have Crohns disease. I couldn't figure out how I was going to physically run to the potty with half a leg. Best thing then and now for the lifestyle we live. Theirs not much I still can't do except run a marathon. LOL
I do all the house cleaning, cooking, shopping and taking the dog out. So my painting time is kinda limited. It is a reality excape sometimes for me.
I think a few here could write a book on our life.

Keep at it Rick. Things will work out.

Richard
 
Herb, we have a lot in common. My wife fell and broke her hip a few years back, has seizures and takes meds for that, has had 2 major back surgeries and as of now can only stand up for just a few minutes at a time. She is either in bed or in a recliner all day.
As for me, I had to have a leg amputated when I was 58 but after 6 months went back to work as a electrician and worked until I could retire early. During the hospital stay ( 1 month ) I told the doctor that I wanted a colostomy because I have Crohns disease. I couldn't figure out how I was going to physically run to the potty with half a leg. Best thing then and now for the lifestyle we live. Theirs not much I still can't do except run a marathon. LOL
I do all the house cleaning, cooking, shopping and taking the dog out. So my painting time is kinda limited. It is a reality excape sometimes for me.
I think a few here could write a book on our life.

Keep at it Rick. Things will work out.

Richard
Sound like we are in the same boat except So far I have not had any limbs amputated not that the docs while in the military did not think about it . But Yes for many airbrushing , model building , and other things is an escape . So see Rick you are not a lone we all have thing in common besides airbrushing.
Plus your already a teacher being you helped Jurien in learning control.
But I think if you ask any of us would we trade our lives to something else the answer would be NO! The events that I have lived through has made me who I am .So stay strong and you will get there.
 
Herb i totally agree. I wpuld not change my life for anything. I practiced a little tonight and the brush behaved really well. Did some warm ups, played with reduction, all the while writing down what i reduced to. Finally got it down to 3 drops water to 1 drop of paint for com art opaque black. Al night the brush responded well. Have a little confidence back.
 
Herb i totally agree. I wpuld not change my life for anything. I practiced a little tonight and the brush behaved really well. Did some warm ups, played with reduction, all the while writing down what i reduced to. Finally got it down to 3 drops water to 1 drop of paint for com art opaque black. Al night the brush responded well. Have a little confidence back.
That is great now you only have 999 more colors to go LOL . Yes black and white are the best to play with on learning reduction . I am happy to hear you had a good night of painting .
The hardest part is learning reduction . While I know there are videos out there that show people using no reduction at all and doing awesome work I am not one of those people :D
 
Herb i totally agree. I wpuld not change my life for anything. I practiced a little tonight and the brush behaved really well. Did some warm ups, played with reduction, all the while writing down what i reduced to. Finally got it down to 3 drops water to 1 drop of paint for com art opaque black. Al night the brush responded well. Have a little confidence back.
Great. That's good to hear you got that sucker working for you. I'm still trying to get this reduction science down too. I've got better at it, but it's still not perfect. Lots of tip dry, like every 5 - 10 seconds and a lot of the time it seems like there's a dead spot in the trigger. I'll ask for paint and there's nothing, all of a sudden bam, I whole bunch comes out. I'm pretty sure it's the mixture and my Newb hands at the controls LOL. I guess I'm 90% there with it, but I'll keep trying different mixes and get there eventually.
When I get the chance I'm going to play Mr.Micron's 1 drop and really get it down.

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@SiRoxx
It really works. The key i think is to start at 35 psi like he said and if your mixture isnt right clean the brush out and dont just add another drop of water to the mixture because you wont know the ratio because you have already used part of your former mixture. And like he said 999 more colors to go.. Oh and i write my mixture down when i get on that myself and my brush likes. That and i dont forget like i always do..hmmm did i put one drop or 2 in that cup...lol
 
I need to try that way because I still have a little problem with pressure and thinness.
Hope it works out for you Rick.

Richard
 
So far its working great. Had alot of fun just drinking my coffee, listening to tunes and just all around practicing and working on reduction. I am positive the reduction was my and these brushes problems all along because i didnt have one issue all night long. Tip dry was at a minimum but i still had it and i dont think it will ever go away completely and im good with that as long as i dont have the irratic issues ive been having. We will see what today brings after i go to the post office.
 
Well done , now for the bad news. Tip dry never goes away completely with waterbased paint. It minimizes with practise but is never gone completely. Comart will be minimal as is E’tac EFX
 
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