The BEST Airbrush!!

hi my name's Scott the miniature maniac and today we're finding the best airbrush [Music] what up mini family welcome to the last installment of recommendation November as I said in the introduction today we're looking at air brushes but more specifically we're looking at the air brush that is going to be the best daily driver for you while it's going to accomplish the majority of the tasks you need in one single package today we're looking at the Badger so tar 2020 badger patriot 105 and the harder and steenbeck evolution but more specifically the evolution with the special trigger designed by cult of pain who recently had a Kickstarter for this brush and I imagine will be selling at some point in the future it sent me one of these brushes for free for review and are in no way affecting my opinion of it and the owada HP CS now there are a lot of air brushes on the market and in the interest of not totally emptying my bank account I picked the ones that you hear about the most in regards to miniature painting they're also kind of like the mid-tier offering of each of these brands they're not the cheapest one but they're also not the most expensive one now if you're curious about a resource that compares more air brushes than I do in this video I've put a link in the description to a great site that you can check out that compares air brushes in a consistent way that being said today we are comparing dual action gravity-fed air brushes this design makes the most sense for a miniature painting and as a quick recap as to what these two terms mean gravity feed means that the paint pot is positioned above the element that distributes the paint so gravity feeds the paint into the air brush as it blows it out hence the name gravity-fed a different design test would be siphon feed where the paint pot is below the airbrush and sucked up into the air brush the benefit of siphon fees that often times you have a much larger chamber for your paint so you can paint for a much longer and you can paint much larger things but when we're painting miniatures measures often very small hence the name miniature so we are often good enough with the capacity of the Paint Pot of a gravity-fed airbrush gravity-fed airbrush are also much easier to change the color and clean out the pot because they're not in some little chamber that needs to be opened and closed repeatedly and oftentimes as manager painters we are changing the color quite frequently so this is a very convenient feature dual action refers to the fact that the trigger has two functions when you push it down that modulates the air pressure and when you pull it back that modulates how much paint is coming out now in my experience most air brushes are pretty much either blowing or they're not blow and there really isn't much modulation in that pushing down but that pulling back every single air brush I've ever used has that functionality now it's super helpful when you're trying to apply a very small amount of painting and do a nice blend of two colors alright that's it for the review let's get into the comparison and the first thing we are going to do is we're going to break down each airbrush and talk about the key differences of each design [Music] the first one we'll look at is one of my first airbrushes the Badger Patriot 105 at the time of this video this airbrush is priced at 67 dollars at 88 cents on Amazon it comes standard with a 1/3 fluid ounce cup and at 0.5 millimeter needle but can be topped out for a point 3 5 if you need the precision for me this is what an airbrush looks like the key differences that make this special is the needle that is accessible in the back you can untighten the needle chuck and get it right out when you need to which is something that I use very often mine did not come with a crown to protect the needle and this is nice because it makes cleaning dry tip quick and painless but it also meant that you maybe accidentally bending the tip if you are absent-minded finally the airbrush hose connector is suddenly more proprietary than the other brands we're looking at today next we'll talk about these so Tarte 2020 pretty much everything that was true about the 105 is true about the Soutar in a sexier black pattern that has more control once you go black you never go back coming in at $89 on Amazon this airbrush is fitted by default with a 1/12 fluid ounce cup at a point 2 millimeter needle but can be swapped out for two other in deal sizes should you need the variety in previous versions the nozzle head screwed into the main body but I have a newer version which is soldered on to the body one less link in the chain to leak a Zafar mentioned like the 105 this is an easily removable needle and also has a depth gauge in case you want to limit how far back you pull the trigger this admittedly is not something I ever used but could be handy for practicing should you need it next up is the owada HP CS a similar design to the previous brush with some differences this brush comes in at $150 on Amazon and features a 132 fluid ounce cup and 0.35 millimeter needle some special features about this airbrush are that it has a little pivoting cylinder on a trigger that makes installing it really easy when you need to put it back together after a full cleaning the crown on it is fully circular making a blowback mixing or really easy all you have to do is put your finger over it no messing around with pinching the needle finally we have the cult of paint edition of the harder and steenbeck evolution with a point four millimeter needle and a one-sixth fluid ounce cup coming in at 146 dollars on Amazon the difference between this model and the normal evolution is the new trigger design and also the new and needle profile which will be a neater profile coming soon to all harder and steenbeck air brushes so this review is a little future-proof the brush comes with two types of crowns that slip off and on with a pressure fit and the whole front element comes off without any tools which makes cleaning really simple the trigger like the owada installs really nicely and makes it easy to put together this is also the only airbrush that we're looking at today that can swap out the paint pot for a smaller one next let's look at the beam angle of each airbrush I'm going to take all of our contestants put water in the pot and then fully pull back on the trigger to see what kind of spray pattern we're getting the wider the spray pattern the more this airbrush can cover in a short amount of time the tighter the spray pattern the more accurate it can be if you look with the naked eye you can tell the 105 has the widest angle which makes sense because it has the widest diameter needle this means when it's fully pulled back there's the largest hole which material can come out of this means that if expediency is your aim the 105 is your go to it can cover the largest area of the quickest now that ever sits between the points two millimeter needle the Soutar the point three five of the HP CS and the point four of the evolution turned to become a little less obvious which is kind of a surprise to me you'd expect it to follow a pretty clear order based on the needle size but maybe bottoming out the trigger kind of skews the results also for fun I tried to make the smallest beam as well just so you can get an idea of how narrow a beam all these brushes are capable of okay that was mildly interesting now on to the clog test and we're using the most prolific clogger and that is white primer what we're gonna do is we're going to fill each airbrush up with 2.5 and milliliters of white primer and we're going to empty that pot in a pattern of two seconds on the trigger two seconds off the trigger kind of like what you would be doing if you were priming a large amount of stuff in the end we're going to compare the build-up on each to see what happens when looking at the buildup on each dino we can see that the smaller the needle the smaller the blob which kind of makes sense because less primer is coming out meaning less material is building up less surface area for the primer to cling to but conversely a smaller the needle the longer takes to get rid of all the primer and also the easier it is to clot it because the hole is smaller Patriot blues through the primer in 40 seconds whereas the evolution took 58 seconds the HPC s took one minute and 47 seconds and the sitar took over three minutes and I didn't even get through all the primer I kind of expected to see a larger amount of buildup on the airbrushes that had a smaller diameter needles like the sitar and the Wada HP is CS but that's not what I saw and I guess that kind of makes sense because the smaller the needle the less surface area there is for primer to cling to so okay another mildly interesting test now let's look at how far the trigger depresses when you push it down earlier I made the joke that despite airbrush is being called dual action none of them can actually modulate the pressure that well because when you push it it's either on or it's off but if a trigger had more travel it would be easier to modulate that air pressure so let's see which one has the most distance all the air brushes have a travel of around two to three millimeter whereas the evolution has to travel of 5 millimeters maybe the evolution actually does allow for controlling the pressure next let's look at how well each airbrush atomizes paint or how small the particles are that are coming out of the airbrush ideally we want these smallest particles possible because that makes the most seamless blends in this test I have a little guide that ensures that I'm always staying the same distance away from the test board in this case about 12 millimeter a fairly normal accurate working distance I also used black ink across all tests unthe in shooting at around approximately 18 psi taking a look at this chart the HPC s takes the cake for the tightest spread and the least particles evident the Patriot really struggle with this test until I turn of the psi a little bit and then it tightened up the evolution looks like it comes in a second with a sitar in third now for finally scientific and also a most important test in my opinion I'm gonna take each of these brushes and paint a single Space Marine with them to kind of get an idea of what it's like to take a project from beginning to end or at least close to it to get an idea for how these guys function a Space Marine was picked because they're largely one color and they have lots of interesting volumes when it comes to shading and highlighting which will really stretch the legs of the air brushes I'm gonna paint all the space rings with the same color how good the Space Marine looks shouldn't inform you about how good the airbrush is likely I just got better toward the end of the trial but I did pick up some things I liked and didn't like about each breast let's go over that now when I was using the Patriot 105 I was getting some leaking coming out of the threads in the front so I resolved that with some pipe dope on the threads but you can also fix that leaking issue with beeswax or teflon tape or any other kind of plumbing sealant also with the 105 always struggling with atomization trying to hide my blends with the airbrush there were speckles on the marine and also I was struggling with accuracy and that makes sense because it's a point five millimeter needle that's also kind of the strength of the badger Patriot 105 I really do like this massive needle it feels like it's almost indestructible I start like I'm gonna sneeze on and it's gonna shatter into a million pieces and that can be really helpful for a beginner and kind of not starting out with the most dainty of needles the sokar 2020 has far more control in the 105 and also produces much less speckles than the 105 but the cost of having to deal with one of these skinniest needles i've ever seen on the face of this earth it feels like that thing is going to break in my hands whenever I have to take it out as previously mentioned both badger brushes have a proprietary connector for the air hose my owada and also my harder and steenbeck connected just fine with my somewhat generic master brand quick hose adapter but the Badger one needed some adapting so when you're buying a non badger compressor with these air brushes you want to make sure that you actually can fit it on or you have an adapter for it in some way I also want to address the fact that this is a point two millimeter needle all online resources will tell you that the smaller the diameter of the airbrush needle the more prone it is to clogging now I've used a Soutar for probably the last two years I've done things with it like priming albeit one miniature and also base coating and all the other tasks you might do with the Soutar and I've personally never had any clogging issues I'm not sure if I'm just getting really lucky or I'm doing something right or there's something wrong with my airbrush but I'd love to know if you guys have had that similar experience there's a smaller diameter needle actually cause more clogging or that just something that I hear online all the time the owada HP CS has great accuracy and also atomizes paint really well this makes getting blends slightly easier on this brush compared to the other brushes that we are testing also that circular crown allows for backflow mixing without any kind of fuss but one thing I noticed when I was using the owada HP CS that it seemed like the air pressure was always higher than on the other brushes even when I turned it down way low so that kind of gave me an idea for a test I took each airbrush I took their needle guards off and I blew full pressure into a microphone at the same distance and whatever one is louder is passing more air pressure and it looks like the two Badgers are pretty much the same amount of air pressure at about minus 15 and DB and both the evolution and the owada HP CS are tied at around minus 21 DB so those two are blowing more air pressure at the same psi with different air brushes so this isn't necessarily a problem but it means that you'll need to turn down the pressure even more when you're moving in closer for those nice accurate strokes additionally the owada does have that little cutaway section to remove the needle but you can't remove the needle else you also take the back cap off this is kind of annoying but a lot of owada user well oftentimes airbrush with that back off entirely to make getting the needle really easy but that's kind of awkward to hold so it's kind of a demerit on the airbrush finally the evolution it turns out that you can actually in fact control the air pressure with the depressing of the button which is pretty freakin sweet if not for the fact that also so much paint comes out with the slightest pull of the trigger far more than the other three it is really really sensitive if this airbrush had a depth stop to kind of control that like the Soutar has and also like more expensive harder and steenbeck air brushes have I'd actually probably use it because there were so many times when I applied way too much paint to the spaceman because I was just pulling it back just a little bit too far also because this airbrush has an interchangeable cup it has this long sloping neck to it which makes painting and also mixing paint in the cup a little bit harder because the majority of the paint deposits into that little narrow canal at the bottom it also doesn't have an accessible needle like the Badger airbrush but this isn't that big of a deal because the front element comes off so easily which allows for cleaning of the needle but if I'm being honest I'd prefer to take the needle out and clean that versus taking the front element out and having to deal with lots of small little tiny bits I feel like I'm more prone to lose that than I am to lose a long needle lastly I want to address the special trigger on here from cult of paints with the 1/6 fluid ounce pot on this airbrush and the angle of it I feel like my finger is a little bit too close to the paint pot I often found myself kind of clawing at the trigger as opposed to putting my finger on top of the pad of the trigger and that just made this issue even worse also it seems like with the orientation of the trigger their intention was that your finger would come straight down the barrel of the airbrush and rest on the trigger in that nice little curve whereas in reality your finger is coming from the side of the airbrush so it seems like it would have made a little bit more sense to rotate the about 10 or 15 degrees to accommodate for that fact to make it a little bit more ergonomic but your mileage may vary so which of these air brushes is the best airbrush well I'll start by saying two things one I had problems with every single one at these air brushes none of them are perfect and two you can get phenomenal results with all of these air brushes it's not like one is going to make you a better airbrush sure than the other cut the X got get to the result yeah you know that being said if you were to pick one airbrush that had the best results out of all of the four I would say is probably the owada HPC s that has the best atomization of paint the needle size allows for good coverage but also really nice accuracy albeit a kind of an expensive price at less than half the price you can buy a badger Patriot 105 and if you don't have an airbrush and you're looking to kind of dip your toes into the airbrush world that wasn't hesitated a second to recommend this airbrush and who knows you can get the 0.35 millimeter conversion head for the patriot maybe it acts similar to the owada HP CS if you already own a patriot and you're looking for kind of a cheaper entry into the world of more accurate air brushes the Soutar is a phenomenal airbrush and I have used it for the last two years and it's it's great I would recommend that one to you now I want to recommend the evolution to people who want the ultimate control but there's that sticking issue of if I pull a trigger back slightly so much paint comes out and I kind of talked to other evolution owners to kind of see if they also experienced the same thing and they confirmed my issue but it is freaking sweet that you can actually control the air pressure with the trigger and you don't have to keep going back to your compressor to turn it up and turn down well team thanks for sticking it out with me through the entirety of November with all these head-to-head comparisons if you're interested in buying any of the air brushes that I reviewed in the course of this video you can find affiliate links to all of them in the description and when you buy using these links I earn a little bit of a commission and no extra cost to you and I mean a lot to receive your support in this way if you like videos like this I have three other ones that we did in the previous three weeks you can find LinkedIn app list in the top right hand corner if you like the channel and you want to support it I have a patreon account with a bunch of fun rewards I sell merchandise like this sick t-shirt which you can find both things linked in the description below subscriber die and most importantly don't forget to farm or airbrushes than I did in this video I dug I dud this is the desert this is the this is the this is it that this desires to do let's so let's see how far dammit use and this airbrush in this airbrush look

Channel: Miniac

Views: 552,940

Keywords: sdub, miniac, airbrush review, iwata airbrush, iwata airbrush review, badger airbrush, badger vs iwata, badger vs iwata airbrush, badger patriot 105 airbrush, badger sotar 2020 airbrush, badger sotar 2020 review, harder and steenbeck evolution, harder and steenbeck evolution review, h&s evolution, airbrushing for beginners, which airbrush to buy, miniature painting airbrush, airbrush miniature painting, airbrush comparison, roundup, airbrush recommendation

Id: _-WxKl_AVTE

Length: 20min 4sec (1204 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 30 2018