Recently I made the leap into name-brand airbrushes when I picked up a new Badger 105 Patriot. The decision to upgrade from my cheapo no name airbrush came after a number of frustrating air brush sessions, or attempts at sessions. My most recent endeavor was trying to base coat 6 (lol) vehicles I had recently finished building for the Horus Heresy, as well as a Drop Pod I rescued from Ebay. After setting up my airbrush booth and vent contraption (shout out to Barbatos Rex’s guide on Youtube), I went about thinning and mixing my paint.
The airbrush I got with the air compressor honestly gave me nothing but trouble since I first started using it about a year ago. Paint would clog the nozzle and the tip would dry after a few minutes of use. I spent more time disassembling, cleaning, reassembling, and then remixing paints and thinners than I ever did laying down base coats on my minis. I experimented with Citadel, Vallejo, and Monument paints and a few different thinners and flow improvers from Vallejo and Army Painter. Last spring I even went to an awesome in person airbrushing class up at the Dice Dojo that my friend Patrick runs, and got plenty of tips and best practices. This time around it was more of the same problems and I decided I’d finally spring for a name-brand “beginner” airbrush and see if that made a difference.
I found a good deal on Amazon and in a few days I had a new Badger 105 airbrush along with the adapter I’d need to use it with my compressor. I loaded it up with some cleaner from Badger and tested it out. The 105 comes standard with a 0.5mm nozzle, and at about 20psi it can clear the paint cup in a few seconds. The build is pretty standard, nothing too fancy, but it does feel solid and well balanced in your hand and the trigger action is smooth and precise enough. This feels like a big upgrade from the generic one, and the results were pretty satisfactory!
I had no trouble loading in some Vallejo Air, a healthy amount of Army Painter Thinner, and blasting some really smooth base coats of Royal Purple on all of my Heresy vehicles. The 0.5mm nozzle is really no joke, as it creates a wide cone which was honestly perfect for just base coating these models. I ended up using the entire bottle of Vallejo Air in this session. Cleaning it was straightforward as well. I ran cleaner through it and wiped down the nozzle and cup until there were no more traces of paint. Lastly I pulled the needle out for a quick wipe which was also really easy. All in all I’m actually looking forward to using my airbrush more often, rather than seeing it as a whole afternoon/evening project. With enough practice I feel I can eventually pull off decent zenithal shading, and maybe some detail work on larger minis. At around $85-90 this feels like a great next step for someone learning to use an airbrush for miniatures.
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