Monthly Archives: October 2013

How often do you clean your airbrush?

By clean, I mean all parts stripped and thoroughly clean.
Guilty as charged, I am one of those who will only strip my airbrush apart when I discovered it is giving problem upon usage.
See, I have a few airbrushes so if that happens, I will quickly switch to the next available one and start spraying away. This is where the problem starts.

The affected airbrush is kept back into storage. The cycle repeats itself after a few painting sessions (which might be weeks or months apart) and soon, I will realized that all my airbrushes become unserviceable. Paint clogged inside the body is one common thing which if left over a long period of time, it will be too difficult to remove.

I learned my lesson and thus I am more disciplined now to occasionally stripped them to clean and serves as a way to maintain their serviceability. Often, I will use an empty plastic container, place all parts of the airbrush into it and then pour airbrush thinner to a level that just cover the parts surfaces. Remember to take out those rubber O-rings if possible. Soak them for a period of time say 1 hour (do not left it for too long or overnight if you did not remove the rubber O-ring as it will melt the rubber due to prolonged exposure to thinner) and then bring each part out to dry clean with paper towel and using cotton bud (q-tip) to clean the internal areas.

So, how often do you clean your airbrush?

Here are my airbrush, top left: Procon Boy platinum 3 (my workhorse), top right: Wave 231, 0.3 and 0.5 interchangeable, bottom right and left: cheap china brand bought for backups.

my-airbrushes

my-airbrushes2

SG GBWC 2013 results and afterthought

SG GBWC has come to an end.
Results are:

1st:
gbwc-2013-entries-35

2nd:
gbwc-2013-entries-3

3rd:
gbwc-cd-18

Congrats to all winners as well.

Time for some reflection 🙂
This time round, I wanted my entry to be a diorama. This is because many times, my friends commented that most of my entries are too “stiff” or rather they are not posed in a dynamic way etc. You can’t satisfy everyone right? But they do have a point 🙂 I can’t blame them though haha as I think I have always stick to my usual way of presenting my entries either in a stand up position or inside a hangar (which is still standing pose haha).

Thus the idea of getting out of my comfort zone and try something new for a change. So I began toying ideas and I started the Whitebase diorama constructions. At first I was going to use MG Zaku and MG Gundam, but the Whitebase structure will be more than the contest stated dimension. Not giving up the idea, I settled for 1/144 based diorama and went for it.

Actually this build helps me to finish off many of my snapped built kits that were sitting on the shelves for many years e.g. Gun Cannon (imagine this is the 1st HGUC kit!), Guntank and RGM 79. I also added the RB-79 Ball to complete all EFSF mobile suits appearing in 0079.

For Zeon MS, obviously it is Char’s Zaku and Zeong, and a Tri-Star MS Zaku I. The title being “Char’s Dream: Attack on Whitebase” that Char is picturing his victory attack on Whitebase.

Overall, it was my first using 1/144 kits for GBWC and getting out of my comfort zone doing a diorama involving dynamic poses. I learned a lot from this build and will certainly help prepare myself for future dioramas.