Why You Need an Airbrush in Your Wood Shop

Airbrushes are really cool. And I don't know about you, but I've always had this image in my head that airbrushes are something that only somebody in a motorcycle shop has and they're using them to put flames on a gas tank. They're great for that. They really are. But what I've come to learn is they do have a spot in a woodworking shop as well.

And that's what I want to show you. I want to just kind of give you the 30,000 foot view of what an airbrush can do for you. Very versatile tool, really cool way to add a lot of great decorative and easy to apply ideas to your woodworking projects. First, let's just have a look at what the deal is with an airbrush. Airbrush is really a great name because stuff that you would normally probably do with a paint brush, you can get in here and do with the airbrush.

Now what's neat is that when I get right in tight I can use the airbrush to really just provide a fine, fine detail line. As I come out, see how the fan gets bigger? Then I get a little less opacity, come back in and get a much tighter line. Now, one of the things to be aware of is that there are different sizes of tips available. This is the real, real small one that's in here now.

That's what's given me that ability to do a real tight and fine line. If I go to a bigger tip than I can get a bigger fan which gets material over a broader area faster. I'm going to show you that just a little bit later. So again, all I wanted to do here was give you a little bit of an idea of what an airbrush can do. Now, let's look at how we can use these capabilities on projects.

My friend, Tim, did this cool carving for me and one of the things I want to do here is take advantage of what the airbrush can do and make his hat black. So, you know, imagine that if I had just a big aerosol can of black how hard it would be to get the control I need to only get the paint here on the hat. You know that I have it all over the face and every place else. I'd have to mask that off or something. So with the airbrush I can get right where I want it to go.

I also control how much paint I'm putting on. Do I want it to be perfectly dark black? Do I want it to be kind of gray? I can get here under the brim. So this is probably the kind of thing that, you know, you really recognize an airbrush for is the ability to get paint in these real tight spots with real good control.

It's very easy to change color. All I need to do is clean out this pot, run a little bit of solvent through it, in this case water, and then change color by adding a different paint in there. One of the things I do want to point out. Start using an airbrush. You want to make sure you're using the right paint.

There are airbrush-specific paints that are just the right viscosity to run through the tiny, tiny orifices that these guns have. So this is a great example of detailing the hat on this carving figure and how easy the airbrush makes it. Let's look at a couple more things the gun can do. A lot of you know that I've built a few guitars and I liked building them. And one of the things I wanted to work on is a sunburst pattern on the back of a guitar.

And that's what I'm working on here. This is really cool because, you know unlike a conventional aerosol can of paint I'm getting the control I need to bring the yellow out to the real dark red that I've already got on there. And again, if I go in close, I get a darker line. If I come back out, I get a little bit bigger fan. Now I did go to a bigger tip for this than what I had in earlier.

And that's what gives me the ability to get the fan I want here instead of the real tight detail, like when I was writing. I can put this on in a little bit bigger area. Very cool. And my sunburst is coming along really well. So again, another application here for the airbrush.

Next thing I want to show you, we've looked at pigmented items like paint. Next thing I want to show you is running some clear coat through the gun and how you can use it as a finishing touch up gun for your clear coat finishes like shellac. I've changed my vessel here for holding the finish before I had that cup on top like this. And obviously that's a smaller capacity. With this one I've got more capacity so I can spray more.

What I'm going to do here is use this to touch up this cabinet door, which over time has got some dings in it. So this is a great thing to remember for your shop where if you get into scenarios where you want to put finish on just a small project or what if you install something in somebody's and after the fact you have a look at it and you realize that it got a couple of dings during the installation process what an easy device this is to carry in, self contained with that little compressor. And I can very easily rejuvenate my top coat. In this case, I've got shellac in here and it's doing a great job of laying it out and repairing those dings I have in my pine door here in the shop. So a lot of information here about airbrushes.

Lots of different things you can use them for. And, frankly, the longer this thing is in the shop the more applications I'm finding. So hopefully you'll get a chance to go out and try an airbrush of your own and find all the different things you can do with it in your shop, too.