TOOL TIME - Comparison Badger and Harder & Steenbeck airbrushes

[Heavens Eagle]

First off there is this:

I think most of us are setting in the lower right corner.
But! Then there is this:

Alas I have not had a War Department for many, many years thus I can do posts on Airbrushes. So here is a short review on the differences between Badger (mostly SOTAR) and my Harder & Steenbeck airbrushes.

Hope you enjoyed this little post. My Badger brushes have pretty much become retired at this point. The H&S brushes just work and are easier to clean up.

 

[Sharkmouth]

Awesome to know...

 

[moon puppy]

Very nice Paul. After my last purchase experience from Badger I've been thinking about trying something else. How do the spray patterns compare? I know the Sotar should be able to give a pencil thin line, I've never been able to achieve that but I figure it's the medium more than the brush. What would be the comparable model to the Sotar and how does it spray?

 

[Heavens Eagle]

Very nice Paul. After my last purchase experience from Badger I've been thinking about trying something else. How do the spray patterns compare? I know the Sotar should be able to give a pencil thin line, I've never been able to achieve that but I figure it's the medium more than the brush. What would be the comparable model to the Sotar and how does it spray?

I have the EVOLUTION CR Plus with a 0.15mm nozzle that I use A LOT. I also have the Plain EVOLUTION which came with two size sets of tips (0.2mm and 0.4mm). Each tip set has a needle, nozzle, and air head with a needle cap. I read someplace that H&S did a modification to their needles that truncates them so the pointed tip doesn't stick out so far. As I was having a little build up problem with my .15 I modified the tip of the needle down a little so it is shorter and it did make a difference. I have been playing with doing finer lines and the H&S does seem to do a better and easier job of them than the Sotar did. I do think the super fine lines though require really thin paint with just the right air pressure and that means you should have an air valve at the airbrush to adjust air flow right there.
Thus it starts becoming a paint by feel and intuition than by absolute settings.
I did have a lot of trouble with the Sotars when spraying any kind of acrylic. They would just clog up. With the H&S when it gets a little clog, I can open it and spritz out a "wet" spot which clears it and it works great for a while. Again, if I am spraying the Vallejo Air with the flow improver I don't seem to have any trouble with clogs.

Note that the color on my Pak 40 was old Testor's Model Master Rot Braun primer. All the German camouflage was Vallejo air with the airbrush flow improver added. It sprayed wonderfully with not a bit of trouble through the Evolution and 0.2mm tip set. Vallejo makes a primer paint in the RAL 8012 RotBraun color and I will be using that on my armor builds from now on.

 

[paddy]

I have to say i have a badger Krome Renegade which i really like but the caveat would be i only use MRP and Alclad for 99% of my work and both are very thin and pre thinned and dont have a tendency to dry on the tip. I doubt it would be much use for something like Tamiya thinned with rubbing alcohol with its super high evaporation rate. I am happy to put down 6 coats to get a cover and use a very small pigment paint like MRP, some would like to do one coat ion tamiya and a renegade isn't going to do that nearly as well..

 

[Heavens Eagle]

I have to say i have a badger Krome Renegade which i really like but the caveat would be i only use MRP and Alclad for 99% of my work and both are very thin and pre thinned and dont have a tendency to dry on the tip. I doubt it would be much use for something like Tamiya thinned with rubbing alcohol with its super high evaporation rate. I am happy to put down 6 coats to get a cover and use a very small pigment paint like MRP, some would like to do one coat ion tamiya and a renegade isn't going to do that nearly as well..

I have a Krome and the functional part is the same as the Sotar. I do believe that the passage for the paint being larger in the H&S does make a big difference when spraying thicker paints.
The Vallejo Air paints are thinner than the basic color paints, but I had trouble spraying those through my Badger brushes. Have sprayed small amounts of Vallejo Air paints through my H&S brushes without any trouble. They also spray the Alclad primers very well as well as the old Testors Model Master colors, and Tamiya colors.

 

[Bugatti Fan]

H&S are very good high quality air brushes. So is Iwata.
Those two names get repeated over and over as favourites of modellers.
I do think that there is a bit of a trans Atlantic divide with regard to brand loyalty.
H&S and Iwata appear to be more favoured in the UK and Europe, although at one time there was a very high quality air brush named the Aerograph that was made by DeVillbiss in Bournemouth here in the UK back in the 60's 70's era.
Americans still have a certain amount of loyalty to the Paasche and Badger brands although to a certain extent I can perceive their loyalty gradually shifting. I am not sure about Badger's current popularity if the recent closure of Barwell, their main UK distributor is anything to go by.
One has to take into account other good air brushes like Grex, and the Ultimate Apex competing too.l
Plus on top of this all the cheapo air brushes of questionable quality and dubious origin on the market to contend with.

 

[paddy]

I just bought an H&S Eclipse because i couldn't get spares for my badger anymore. That said if i could have got them i would never have given up on my Badger renegade krome as it was excellent for all i used it for.. The only report i have on the H&S so far is the air line is cheap and nasty. Well it wasnt cheap at £35 but it doesnt have swivel joints on the fittings so in order to screw one end on to the compressor you have to lay the airline out straight and turn all 3 yards of it about 15 times to attach it. Bloody stupid.

 

[Heavens Eagle]

I just bought an H&S Eclipse because i couldn't get spares for my badger anymore. That said if i could have got them i would never have given up on my Badger renegade krome as it was excellent for all i used it for.. The only report i have on the H&S so far is the air line is cheap and nasty. Well it wasnt cheap at £35 but it doesnt have swivel joints on the fittings so in order to screw one end on to the compressor you have to lay the airline out straight and turn all 3 yards of it about 15 times to attach it. Bloody stupid.

My H&S airbrushes all came with quick disconnect fittings. I decided to use the IWATA MAC valves on them as they simply fit between the airbrush and the quick disconnect fitting. As for air lines I use the Paasche air lines that have the built in moisture traps at about 18 inches from the airbrush connect. I had water get all the way through the air line once while I was spraying, and the built in traps prevents that. Once in a great while I will open the drain on that little trap "just to be sure". I even got water out of it once. Not much, but any will bugger up your paint work, so better safe than sorry. I bought some quick disconnect units for the ends of the Paasche hoses off of Amazon and they were quite inexpensive for most of them.
My daughter is getting my Badger Krome, Sotar 20/20 mid cup size, and Sotar 20/20 Slim, with Paasche Mac Valves, quick disconnects, all the Badger parts to go with them, and and a nice air hose with a quick disconnect on it. She will have to get her own compressor.

 

[Bugatti Fan]

Paddy. You might well be able to obtain an airline with rotating tightening caps on each end.
I would imagine that most airbrush suppliers should be able to supply one as the thread size is probably an industry standard on many makes of air brush?
My three Badgers have the old thin hoses.
Which leads me on to Badger Spares. Despite Barwell the UK distributor no longer trading I have found a few other places selling Badger spares by just typing in Badger air brush spares suppliers UK as a web search. It depends of course on what spares you might need, but I should think that run of the mill spares like needles, seals and so on might be reasonably easy to get here in the UK.
If push comes to shove, Badger in the US should be able to help, but my experience of emailing their spares/customer service department at least 3 times elicited no responses whatsoever. If this is the norm then I am not impressed !
I have a very old Badger 100XF, an excellent and expensive at the time, little air brush that I bought way back in the 70's that has a cup that locates into the side of the main body. I wanted to buy a new shell with a gravity feed that I hoped would be interchangeable to be able to utilise many of my original air brush parts. Not having the courtesy of a reply from the parent company. I will now be ditching the product altogether and going the Iwata, H&S, Apex or some other quality air brush route. It is a shame really as having been loyal to using the Badger brand for as long as I can remember it is now time as I see it to move to another brand. If they cannot be bothered to respond to me, who else is not being responded to ? Maybe they now just see the home market as being enough ? Back in the 70's and 80's, Badger was aggressively marketing to the UK model maker via their distributor at the time, Morris and Ingram.
Back then I guess they had a wide open market in the UK model maker.
Paasche however never really even bothered with the UK, and is still very popular with American model makers.
Our own excellent and very expensive DeVilbiss Aerograph air brushes were being targeted at the graphic design/art photo retouching market almost exclusively, and it would appear to me that this would to eventually become their Achilles Heel as graphics went more and more onto computers. They eventually made the DeVilbiss Sprite that was a cut down Aerograph with a number of plastic components replacing metal for the model making market. By this time they had already lost out to Badger in the UK.
DeVilbiss still make an Airbrush named the Dagr that appears to be aimed at the custom car painter and is now made in the USA. The UK company itself is still going strong in making commercial spraying equipment that has always been their prime market.