How often are you removing the hose from the water trap? I think I’ve only done that once in a few years
I still have my first airbrush, also a Badger 200 from the mid-late 1960’s. No compressor back then. I used Propel cans. I also have a many decades old Badger 150.
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That was the progression many of us followed.
- Get a Badger 200
- Buy cans of air.
- Go broke and start using a spare tire.
- Get tired of refilling and get a Badger diaphragm compressor
- Get a water filter (I made one) to stop the airbrush from spitting water
- Start upgrading your equipment.
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Yes Greg… but substitute ‘Miller’ for ‘Badger’
Badger’s “good kit,” and their after-sales service is second to none.
I’ve sent my current 45-year-old model 200 off to them for service a couple of times and all it’s ever cost me was the postage to and from.
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I think I did it only once, and I cannot even remember why I did it.
Ironically, I bet I got paranoid about leaks and screwed it extra tight, breaking it.
Talking about leaks and low quality airbrushes,the O ring that goes around the larger “muzzle” (not the nozzle, the larger external one) just snapped.
I recovered and I was wondering what to do.
I didn’t noticed paint leaks but it made some bubbles while spraying water during the clean up.
Do you think it could be fixed? Does cement work on that? I don’t even know if and where I could buy a replacement for such small thing.
You can likely find a replacement o-ring. I pinched the o-ring on my airbrush hose where it attaches to the water trap. I took the hose and pinched o-ring to an air supply store and they found the correct replacement pretty fast.
They cost about .15 cents. You won’t be able to fix the old o-ring. Rubber cement might work but I doubt it. If you find the right replacement buy a dozen and then you’ll have them on hand should another break
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Yeah, I’ll make a trip to the hardware store as soon as I can.
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The hardware guy told me this was the smallest he had, gave it to me for free.
Hopefully it will be good, even if it’s much thicker than the original.
I don’t think you’ll be able to tighten it down now. I could be wrong though. Do you have any stores around you that specialize in air products like CO2 tanks or acetylene for welding? They should be able to help
It was a huge store with a very large warehouse, and it certainly dealt with air compressors and I saw some around.
I’ll see if this one works, and then try some other store.
Hmm, hopefully it works out!
I noticed a sharp pressure decrease last time I used it this morning. That’s enough to make varnish spray very hard.
The above gasket do not seems to be leaking, unless I load the airbrush with water, then I can see some bubbling from the seam.
Moreover, while fiddling with the air pressure regulator (the thing with the on-off screw), the screw came loose and along with it came the gaskets, almost pulverized.
So now I have a leaking regulator (might fix it by removing the screw and seal the hole, it works with my thumb pressed on it) in addition to the general low pressure issue whose cause I haven’t still nailed down. I might try it removing the water trap.
EDIT:
Found these on amazon, do you think some of those will fit?
Use a caliper to measure the outside diameter of the thread/fitting and compare with the listed measurements.
3*1 means 3 millimetres inner diameter and the ring is 1 mm thick (should be about right for airbrush).
In case you don’t use metric: One inch is 25.4 millimetres
It seems that the issue was simply a clog, probably there was some gunk restricting the airflow because after some vigorous scrubbing it started working again. That big gasket I got months ago seems to be holding now, it was probably leaking because of the air blow-back caused by the clog.
No luck with the air pressure regulator, I simply removed the piece as there’s no way I could make it work without new gaskets. I suppose it could be useful if I need to switch airbrush on the fly, but I only own one so there’s no need for that, at least for now.
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