Hetstaine

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I'm looking at a H and S atm but finding it hard to get my hands on one locally, Australia sucks for ease of buying with some products. Looking at one out of Singapore as all Aussie suppliers appear to be nil stock.

Just to wrap up this thread. After a week of back and forth with BNA they have stated the rest of the Iwata HPBH .2 brushes they have in stock are of the same finish. I opted for a full refund so will be sending the brush back on Monday. Iwata never replied to my email showing the comparison between the Eclipse and the new brush in which i was a bit dissapointed with but what do you do. It has made me wary of a future purchase from them going by this experience, which is my only experience with their customer service. So, now i need to find a good quality .2ish brush in around the $400 (Australian) price range.

Ah bummer! I'm doing an Me262 dio at the moment and was loving the work you had done on it so far. I don't have a sod, i'm one of the weird ones that has to finish a project once i've started it. Hope to see her posted one day

My thinking was that someone who worked at Iwata would have picked up on the initial pictures immediately. If that second set doesn't help out i'll go the cotton bud route. Oh, btw, did you ever finish that 163 diorama from a few years back? I was looking at your WIP but it petered out and i couldn't find a ready for inspection post and was interested in seeing the end result. Cheers!

I just sent through this pic which should clearly show the difference in finish, especially considering the Eclipse has 14 months of work under its belt. If you look closely at the top right pic of the new brush you can see super fine strands of the cotton bud stuck to the ridges/rough surface from when i cleaned it last night. Hard to spot as i flushed it several times afterwards and then wiped it dry as well as blowing it out with my other brush to dry it for the pics last night. If i need to i will use a cotton bud and snag a bunch in the cup and see how Santa like i can get it looking

Hmmm, just got off the phone to Iwata and the guy there says he cannot see an issue via the pictures. He stated it looks normal. I was actually silent for a few seconds lol. I re-explained the problem and that you could feel the lack of polish/coating and ridges and how it looks nothing like the smooth and still very chrome interior of the Eclipse cup that is over a year old. This was all via the lady that answered the phone as i had to ring back as he hadn't actioned my email that he stated he would earlier this morning. By the end of our conversation she said i can send the brush back and they will look at it but i'm a bit sceptical of a replacement through Iwata itself now. Im going to take a picture of my Eclipse cup and put it side by side with the new brush and see if he can see the difference between the two. If not i'm recommending him an optometrist Having not heard back from BNA yet as well i'm stuck waiting until next week and hoping BNA gets back to me so i can resolve it with them.

I have sent an email to BNA which i am hoping they will reply to today, no live chat available due to covid and work restrictions unfortunately. I thought i should go through them first seeing as how they have supplied the item. They do have more in stock so i imagine it will just be a straight swap and hopefully i just got a one off. edit- I have just got on to Anest Iwata Australia and spoke to a lovely lady on the phone who i have emailed pictures to. I mainly wanted to see if this is a possible issue with this brush or if they had a bad batch they know about as the box i received does look like it has been on the shelf for quite some time, the part number and bar code stickers being very faded.

BNA Model World so yes, very reputable dealer. Standard sealed Iwata box with the holographic sticker etc. The brush is legit with the usual Iwata engravings, beautiful outside finish and the trigger action is superb.

I just fired of an email, I'm really not happy at all with the inside of the cup. The finish is sub par for the price and is worse than my cheapy backup badger lg100 that doesn't ever leave the draw since i purchased the Eclipse. It's like they just neglected to polish it and i'm unsure if it is meant to be chrome plated, if so, it's so thin as to be near invisible. Very dissapointed atm as it took me a while to save and then finally nail it down to this brush for detail work. I really wanted to give it a good session tonight.. hopefully it's just a one off otherwise i have to look into an alternative .2mm brush for mottling and the like.

I just finished spraying a small test cup, its first, and then after flushing it with Vallejo thinners some paint still remained stuck to the sides which surprised me. I used a small amount of Vallejo airbrush cleaner and a gave it a quick swirl with a cotton bud and noticed it felt 'grabby'. Upon inspection, the inside of the cup seems rough as guts and minimally chromed, definitely not a nice smooth surface. I can feel the roughness with my pinkie whereas my year old Iwata Eclipse is still smooth as the proverbial and has a far better chrome finish in the cup. Is this par for the course with this brush or a legit issue? I honestly expected a beautifully finished cup at the price point compared to the Eclipse.

Great work and a ton of patience shown Jay, well done

On it. Today the needle gets a polish!

Seems there is light at the end of my tunnel. I tried dropping down to 10-12ish psi and made a 70/30 and then a roughly 65/35 mix and with very light coats was able to achieve a fairly decent result. Much better than i had been doing anyway! I think the rest is now down to me practising spraying although i may step up to .35 if that helps with the dry tip issue in any way? I wasn't getting that problem anywhere near as much but was still cleaning the tip quite a bit to lessen it. Thanks a ton for looking in guys, it was doing my head in yesterday and was a bit confidence shattering lol! The hardest part i am finding is getting that sweet spot between just enough paint and ooops that was way too much. The line between the two is so much finer than i expected. Oh and to who asked above, i am mixing first and then pouring into the cup. I am also cleaning the gun regularly and emptying the tank at the end of my sessions as well as the reg intermittently. Another quick questions regards the Tamiya Retarder. Should i add a drop to a mix and will that help with dry tip? I'm unsure of what sort of amount i should use, if any. My basic mix today was 6 (drops) paint, 14 thinners when i was practising and down to 12 or 13 thinners at 12psi. I kept eyeing of the retarder but was hesitant to add any. Thanks again all, you've been a great help.

Hopefully this is the right spot on the forum :) This is a 1/48 kit and my launching pad to 1/32. I just didn't want to screw up a more expensive 1/32 model while learning. I just received my Badger 100LG .25mm brush and 1/6hp 3l tank compressor...and i am really struggling to get a mix going without sputter/overspray or having to clean the tip every ten seconds. For starters i would have thought .25 would be giving me nice fine lines after some hours of practice but i am getting what i feel like is too much overspray even at the lightest touch of paint being engaged. I just finished two hours of mixing testing after much frustration and struggling for three days ...and nights, and decided i need help :) Hopefully that's where you guys come in. To start with, this is the brush and some closeups of the tip just to show that it is centered and seems fine so i can rule that out. I've been all through Dons airbrush, youtube reviews, guides, forums etc and nothing seems to work. The gun has been stripped and cleaned, there is no gunk in it i can see and air flows out as nicely as i think one should. Yet, I am able to produce a better and more modulated finish using spray cans at the moment so something is tragically wrong with either me, my mixes or the brush. Badger tip1 tip2 I started at a 50/50 mix of paint/thinners as that seemed to be a common starting point for newbies after looking at mixes etc for a couple of weeks before purchase, 33/67 is first in the pics so it is goes in thinners/paint ratio order. All of the paints and products are Tamiya- acrylic, X20a thinners and Tamiya retarder. The products i am using are all brand new, so no old crappy paint at all. I cleaned the tip in between every compressor psi change and you can see how the splatter happens almost immediately despite stronger and stronger thinner mixes. The brush was fully cleaned in between each mix change and i was using full air (push down) and the lightest possible paint application (pull back) that i could. chart size 33/67 mix 50/50 mix 60/40 mix 70/30 mix This one was the only one i used retarder in, just a whatever mix because i have tried 1 and two drops over the course of the last few days with a 50/50 mix and it doesn't seem to make a difference. whatevermix The following pic what i have managed to do in between cleaning, many many mixes and a lot of head scratching. It has been a struggle that i have not much enjoyed despite spending a long time researching mixes and newby airbrushing tips and guides over the last month and a half. I don't expect to come out swinging with home runs on my first bat.. but i also didn't expect to be fighting so hard just to get the extreme basics down. FW190 I have sharpened the picture to try and highlight the overspray and splatters as the light i am using at night is bright af and knocks around the detail and colours. The model has been undercoated, preshaded (terribly) sprayed with the colours you see then 1500 grit sanded owing to splatters and basically horrible paint work. At this stage i started respraying but gave up until i sort out what i am doing wrong. The stand outs are the oval blue section under the front of the cockpit. Splatters and overspray. I am using the lightest possible paint pull pressure so as to avoid runs so it isn't me just gunning like mad. I am finding it near impossible to achieve any sort of neat light coat at the moment, basically spraying away from the model onto paper to avoid the initial splatters and once it is going smooth enough to paint, i move over the model. Any more pressure than an extreme light pull and too much paint is coming out meaning i have to move super quick to avoid runs or instant paint blots. I could definitely use it for 1:1 scale plane detail but for modelling i am at a loss. The thing that really throws me is the amount of overspray even a simple dot or thin line produces at the lightest possible pressure. Is mixing really this much of a black art or am i just way off base here? Also should i not be able to get very light coats with this brush and needle without it either splattering or being so thin it runs?? A happy medium seems well beyond me at the moment and i really don't want to be that guy blaming his tools, the only thing i would like to change is a heavier spring to give me a bit of feel as it does seem horribly light. The spring adjustment does nothing to help feel in that area unfortunately. It's all rather frustrating and any advice is muchly appreciated.

I'll definitely be staying staying tuned Jay, and yes, standard hot Aussie summer. Thick skin, good beaches to head to on the weekends and hiding indoors with the aircon on when it gets too be to much. I managed to do most of my modeling outdoors last year which was nice, way to hot inside but the cooler weather is coming so i can creep back into the garage once my airbrush turns up and hide away in the dark.