New Airbrushes

 I have become a bit of a glutton for airbrushes.  A few years ago I bought the what was then new model Badger airbrush...the Patriot105 and instantly fell in love with it. It has been my go-to brush now for a few years. Then last summer I bought the new Patriot105 Arrow, which is just a Patriot with a much smaller cup and it is a tiny tad lighter than the original Patriot105.



                                                             KROME AIRBRUSH

 For the past year I have been hearing great things about the Badger Krome airbrush so I ordered one a few weeks ago and it arrived last week.








 







 As can be seen in the photos above, the brush comes in an impressive black and chrome foam-lined case. Included are a spare needle, an extra nozzle tip and a cap for the paint-cup. This is an awesome brush, feels great in the hand, has a very cool needle-adjustment knob at the back of the brush that limits the needle travel.
 You can dial it down to a pretty fine spray...say the thickness of a thick ball-point pen line. I love this brush and can see it being my new go-to brush...well that was until the arrival on Thursday of.........



                                                  THE SOTAR 20/20 AIRBRUSH

  This was a spur of the moment order last Saturday......I had heard that this baby was the ultimate for fine detail work....Badgers answer to the Micron so I went ahead and ordered it and it arrived yesterday and I immediately unboxed it and started playing.

 Even though the retail cost of the Sotar is higher than the Krome and it is supposed to be the higher-scale product of the two,  the Sotar comes in a very unimpressive, cheesy looking  cardboard box.  It is well protected in foam and comes with extra needle, nozzle tip and guard, a small wrench, alan key and Passche to Badger air-hose adapter.

 As can be seen in the right-hand picture it is slightly shorter in length than the Krome, the paint-cup is much smaller, the trigger is further forward on the brush and of course it has a very nice black finish to it.

 You can tell this brush is something different as soon as you pick it up....it is substantially lighter than the Krome or the Patriot models which was disconcerting at first but I did get used to the light weight almost instantly.  This is a small brush and I have pretty large hands but it really fell into place and was extremely comfortable to work with. The trigger mechanism is wonderful, very comfortable, extremely smooth in action and very precise.

Where this brush is amazing is in how fine a line you can dial it down to.....I was able to get it down to the thickness of a medium-fine ball-point pen...and I am sure  pro-airbrush guys like Michael Graff or George Dent could get it down to almost hair-line fine at least.

I LOVE THIS BRUSH!!!!!!  It's super light,comfortable and gives great results. It's not cheap...$97.00 on Amazon and then you have shipping costs but I think it is well well worth the price, especially if you like airbrushing.

I did a very, very quick weathering job on these two Accurail boxcars with the Sotar,  just 10 minutes after I got it out of the box.