In fact, the HP-AH is my favorite airbrush as I’ve used it to create paint chips from literally hundreds of paints to build the ongoing paint charts we have online. With my previous airbrushes, it seemed like I spent more time cleaning them than using them to the point where I dreaded painting. Both airbrushes are very easy to clean disassembly and reassembly are very straightforward. The HP-AH has a distinctive valve under the nose to fine tune air pressure without having to stop what you’re doing. The other is the Eclipse HP-AH – this is a brilliant design as it has the small cup embedded in the upper surface of the airbrush for applying small quantities of paint for small jobs or touch-ups. The first is the Eclipse HP-CS – it has the gravity-fed cup atop the brush and is ideal for applying paint across larger surface areas yet nimble enough to hold a fine line if I want to trace out a border edge for a camouflage color.

Two of them are now among my core modeling tools. Over the next two years, Iwata sent a range of airbrushes from their Revolution and Eclipse lines, all of which were nice and many of which were shared among members of the Cybermodeler team. That quickly changed as I started putting the Iwata through its paces. Six years ago, Iwata sent me an airbrush to review and while I had seen the Iwata brand over the previous few years, I had never thought about replacing the Badger with another brand. Like the Pasche, the Badger went through seals and gaskets fairly regularly and finally got to the point where it needed to be retired. Disassembly was easy enough, but reassembly was another matter. The Pasche was eventually set aside for a Badger double-action airbrush, and while I learned quite a bit using that airbrush, it too was a pain to maintain.

While the Pasche was easy to use, it was painful to clean and required parts changes every few years to keep it going. I personally started with a single action Pasche airbrush many decades ago that was powered by those interesting propellant cans. There are a number of airbrush manufacturers out there and this particular tool usually becomes a key part of any modeler’s workbench.

Finetune airbrush