Recently my Badger 360 suffered a failure - the seals inside failed causing paint to flow backwards through the brush and out of the trigger. While that brush is on its way back to Badger for repairs, I decided I needed a backup airbrush to get me by. Since finances are tight, and having heard that Harbor Freight Tools, a source of mostly cheap, Chinese imitation equipment sold airbrushes, I stopped by to take a look. I ended up buying the product you see here for $10.99. What was I getting into? We'll see.
The brush came packaged well enough. A standard cardboard box with clear window holds a thin molded plastic container in which the airbrush and associated parts rest. There is a small instruction manual and a limited 1-year warranty card. Along with the airbrush itself, you get 1 small and 1 large paint jar. These are glass with plastic lids. The small jar's lid incorporates the siphon feed tube, but a big downside to this set is the lids are not interchangeable. The mouth of the large jar is bigger than the small jar's. In addition to the jars you get a five foot plastic air hose, a standard 1/4-18 adaptor for the hose, and an adaptor that fits the airbrush propellant cans such as made by Testors. Finally, you get a small wrench to aid disassembly of the airbrush needle and its associated parts.
For $10.99, how is the quality? It's about what you'd expect. Machining is rough and threaded components are slightly tricky while screwing them on. The rear handle, like the body, is plastic and hollow, and a press-fit into the body. I don't expect the air hose to last long, due to it being a simple plastic hose. If it doesn't get brittle with age and crack, crimping or pinching while I use it will probably shorten its life. I'm not sure the O-rings in the needle assembly will tolerate stronger chemicals such as lacquer thinner, so I plan to avoid those in this brush.
How does it spray? The box claims you can get a pattern from 2" down to 1/4". The smallest line I could get with it was around 1/2", and that's being generous. That being said, once I got my air pressure dialed in, spraying was relatively easy. The nozzle adjustment which varies the size of the pattern is pretty coarse, so just a minute turn of the knob can have a sizeable effect on your pattern. You're not likely to get fine detail work out of this brush. However, as you can see in the pic, it's fine for general coverage and for pre-shading panel lines, as long as those panel lines are in larger scales. I'm thinking at 1/72 or smaller a pre-shade will be challenging.
Considering this is an interim tool to just get me by until my main airbrush is fixed, for the price and performance, I'm happy. Another advantage is that if this airbrush fails for whatever reason, a new one can be purchased very cheaply. Harbor Freight also sells a deluxe version, which is a little nicer, for around $25. Unfortunately that one was not in stock when I was at the store. After January I plan on buying a Badger 105 Patriot with the fine needle conversion kit, for use as my secondary and backup airbrush.
Here are some pics:
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| The box, and what's inside the box. |
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| The air line and its fittings. |
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| Airbrush, disassembled. |
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| Slightly different view. |
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| As soon as my air pressure was dialed in, general patterns came out okay. |
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| Practice run on some panel line pre-shading. |
