Getting paint into your airbrush

[54Spitty]

Simple trick I found while battling to get paint from jars into the little container on your airbrush.Buy some party straws from the supermarket firstly as they disposable.Place straw into paint jar and push down,while your doing that place your finger over the hole up at the other end.this traps air in the straw and holds the paint.Then remove and place straw over airbrush jar,remove finger to let paint drop into it.This also makes mixing paint easier as you just have to count the drops.

[Creative Models Australia]

I've found syringes work best for paint, and pippettes for thinner.

Quick, clean, accurate, non messy, and no paint wastage.

[A30_737_AEW&C]

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[Airtourer]

I like using syringes, I get them from my local chemist and are cheap, I use the 5ml syringe. Once I have transferred paint I clean the syringe with thinners, I always leave a bit of thinners in the syringe, it stops the rubber plunger from drying out and sticking, prolongs the life of the syringe.

Des.

[RAAFBrat]

I use a toothpick. I've only used Tamiya acrylics so far, but the method is to thin the paint in the jar, then hold a toothpick against the lip of the jar & into the airbrush receptacle. Tip & pour GENTLY, the paint runs down the 'pick, jobs done.

[Zaggy]

I used to thin in the Jar too, but I have found that in the case of LifeColor (Because getting Gunze is almost impossible) this does weird things to the paint - ie, the first shot will be fine, but come back and use that same colour a week or three later (despite all the shaking and mixing you can do) it wont shoot near as clean (spits and spatter).

As for moving paint and thinners around, the great eBay gods provided me with something like 200 7ml plastic Pipettes for about $5 - them chinese; they cant make an accurate model kit, but they can sure knock stuff out cheap! Depending on how you treat them and clean them (and if you're shooting Acrylic or Lacquer, then cleaning with Acetone), they may last a half dozen uses (Alclad and Alclad Airbrusg Cleaner or Acetone) or they may just keep on going (LifeColor, Tamiya, Gunze, if you clean with a little thinner or metho, then flush with water)...

D

[billb]

for paint I use a small, stainless steel, flat screwdriver and transfer a drop at a time to the airbrush. Wipe clean if i'm mixing colours or going to do a couple of colours in a session, otherwise scrape clean when dried. The screwdriver is also really useful for other things around the bench. For thinner I use pipettes which allow drop by drop control. The drop from the screwdriver is close enough in size to the drop from the pipette to make measuring ratios easy (like Zaggy I have a box of hundreds of the pipettes that will well and truly outlast me. esp. as enamel and acrylic thinner does not affect them at all).
Generally I mix 1:1 with thinner going in first. A load of 15 paint drops and 15 thinner gives a fair amount of paint mix for a large job, otherwise down to 3 or 4 drops of each. Convenient and easy.