Airbursh - Mixing and storage?

Hey guys,

So today i started playing with my Airbrush and have found it can be a little more tedious than maybe i thought. It can be a real pain for only painting one or two small pieces.

What do most of you do? I guess having a larger container with the basic colors like Black and grey made up already and sitting in storage. If i premix and put the paint in a correct container like an old paint container how long will it last?

The only colors I keep pre-mixed are satin black and flat black, two colors which I tend to use a lot of, the rest I mix as needed. Those I do keep mixed, I use so often often I've never had the opportunity to notice a specific 'shelf life'.

Time and practice will teach you how much paint you need to mix to achieve a certain amount of paint coverage. Second to this, you will learn that it is far more economical for both your time and materials usage to keep everything from the current project of the same color for one spraying session. For this reason, I often end up having to wait until everything is sprayed before I can begin assembling various part assemblies.

Ive found that paint doesnt really keep more than a few weeks before it seperates back into its base parts (paint & thinner) to the point where its very difficult to get them mixed back together adequately enough to airbrush them again.

If you are worried about mixing paint, the Paasche has a great color cup that can be used to hold small amount of paint, and you cna mix the paint & thinner right in the color cup, no need to dirty a bottle to hold the paint.

A lot will come form practice. A gravity feed airbrush can be flushed and cleaned out in 3 or so minutes. That's one of the reasons I never even considered getting a bottom feed airbrush with glass jars.