Remaking of the Ridley Keystone & Mountain

[doctorwayne]

I need to come up with a better way to change colors without having to breakdown and clean the airbrush.

Tom, I use a Paasche airbrush, but unlike many modellers, always spray paint from a jar, never from the colour cup.

Pollyscale, Polly S, and Floquil paint bottles are all a good fit for the siphon cap, so when I use-up all of the original paint from one of those bottles, I use lacquer thinner to thoroughly clean both the bottle and its cap, then put them in a drawer so that when I need to paint or mix a new colour, I always have clean bottles on hand.

When I'm painting a something like a steam locomotive, for example, it usually involves at least four or five colours (many similar to one another, but each more appropriate for particular areas).  When I've applied one colour, I then remove and cap that bottle.

To clean the airbrush in preparation for the next colour, all that's needed is to put some lacquer thinner into the colour cup, then spray until the cup is empty...maybe 20 seconds at most.  Remove the empty colour cup, then attach the next bottle of colour, and have at it.

Lacquer thinner will remove pretty-well any type of paint, especially if it's not yet had a chance to dry in the airbrush, whether it's lacquer-based, water-based, acrylic, or something else.

At the end of a painting session, I spray a colour cup of lacquer thinner through the airbrush, then disassemble it completely, putting the small parts into lacquer thinner in the colour cup.  I then take a pipe cleaner, dipping one end into the lacquer thinner in the colour cup, and shove it through the airbrush (both the air passageway and that for the paint).   Next, the small parts are removed from the cup and wiped dry with a clean cloth, and the airbrush reassembled, ready for the next painting session.

I used to do that operation in just over a minute, but I'm clumsier now, and not in much of a rush.

The first time I was able to airbrush Pollyscale paint (I saw lots of on-line how-tos, none of which worked for me) I decided to check Floquil's site (they made Polly S and Pollyscale, in addition to Floquil paints) and following their suggested procedure, painted four dozen undecorated Accurail boxcars, changing colours usually after every 2 or 3 cars.  In most cases, the colours were similar, but, as I was mixing colours on-the-go, definitely different.  In that session, the airbrush never once clogged and I never cleaned the airbrush at all until the final car was done - that was possible due to the colours being similar.
That experience convinced me that Pollyscale was my favourite paint, and I've not yet found a brand comparable.  I still have a fair amount of it left, but black and white are all gone.

Wayne