Model Car Airbrushing Tips For Beginners

Do you love to paint your model cars? Have you been painting them by hand but now want to learn a new technique? Why not learn to airbrush? Airbrushing your model car is something that is actually very easy to learn. You can get the basics down quickly and with a little practice you will get the advanced techniques as well.

Before you begin there are several items that you will need. Most of these can be picked up at a local hobby shop. Some of the local retail stores even carry kits that come with several of these items as well. The first thing you will want is a basic airbrush kit. It should come with the nozzles, hose, jars, covers, etc. It may or may not include a small compressor but your best bet is to find one that does. Just tell the salesperson what you are looking for and they should be able to point you in the right direction.

The next thing you need is personal protective equipment. These items will protect you from accidental inhalation as well as protecting your skin from the paints and cleaners. The items you need are latex gloves, safety goggles, and respiratory protection (breath mask). Painting supplies that you will need include airbrush paints, wet and dry sandpaper, rubbing alcohol, airbrush cleaner, and drafting tape. It is a wise idea to also pick up a small cheap bathroom fan to use for ventilation. Once you get everything home you are ready to build your paint booth.

Take an old cardboard box that is big enough for you to work on your model comfortably and cut out the top and one side. On the side opposite of the one you removed cut a hole big enough for the small fan to fit in. Place the fan in backwards so that it will vent air out of the box. This will provide adequate ventilation while you are airbrushing your car. Once you begin airbrushing you might want to wear a smock or an old shirt in case over spray gets on your clothes. Also, you should do your painting outside. The over spray that vents through fan can be blown all over the place and can make quite the mess. Some of this can also be prevented by loosely wiring a piece of cardboard over the side of the fan that is outside the box. This will allow some air to blow out but most of the paint should collect on the cardboard. Once you have built your simple paint booth you should be ready to begin.

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Extra! Extra! Read All About Car History!

Model cars have been around for quite some time. Even I have to admit going through the phase of putting them together. Even as I write this, I can think of a few of the boxed sets that I would love to pick up from the shelves at the local store and piece together bit by bit. I also have to admit that my patience was never good. But, as with any other thing I have ever collected, there was one thing I always did. I always sought to learn the origin of that item. What’s its history? When did people start collecting them? Maybe I wanted to see if my elders were collecting some of the same things, or sometimes I might just have been looking to see how old a hobby mine was. Never the less, everything has a history and the model cars and the collection of them is no different. So where did it begin? Keep reading!

Birth of Model Cars

In the early 1900s not so long after the first real car was introduced, Germany started producing what would become noted as the first model car. Back then, since it was around the time of war, the only people who could really afford these toys were the sons of rich businessmen. These cars were called tin plate models. The first Die cast ones though, did not come about until the late 1920s or the early 1930s. By 1950 toy companies in Japan were producing these goods.

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