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Iwata HP-BCS Airbrush Review

Iwata-HP-BCS.jpg

Choosing an airbrush is difficult as each different airbrush involves a compromise of one sort or another. For example, go with a very precise high end airbrush like one of Iwata's "Custom Micron" series and get both precise lines as well as big prices for replacement parts. In the end it all comes down to how speciallzed your work is.

My uses for an airbrush are not specialized at all. I want it to do just about everything from painting small objects to stencils to artwork. For that reason I ended up with an Iwata HP-BCS. It has a large 0.5mm needle so I can spray pretty thick paints, but still has delicate enough control that I can produce fine lines. I thought originally that I'd want a cup style airbrush so I could more easily mix color, but then decided that the bottom-feed bottles let me mix up a large and consistant quantity at once instead of having to try and match what I had done before in a small cup.

The action on this brush is smooth and positive. Even a six year old can produce decent results with it once you set the air pressure correctly. Cleaning is fairly simple too, but letting it sit or running through incompatible paints can sometimes require disassembly to make sure it is completely clean. This is not a big problem though and some tuning of the workflow is probably all I need here.

On top of this, the price is right. You can probably find one for somewhat less than $100. I was considering the more expensive HP-CH, but it is about twice the price. It certainly offers the ability to paint finer details, but for now I'm quite satisfied with the HP-BCS.

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  • Comments (1)

    I also have used this Iwata for white and opaque black and what we call dark flesh... I use Paasche for my colors...

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    This is a single article from STUFF dated April 30, 2006.

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