I need to know what parts I need to make an airbrush compressor using a Coleman camping propane tank(for uses in their lanterns and camping stoves).

Luke,
My neighbor built an air supply from Harbor Freight items. He bought a compressed air storage tank for inflating car tires, a regulator and a watertrap. He charges the tank with his 12v car tire compressor or takes it to the service station. The parts cost him $38. He's been using it for a couple of years now, gets about fifteen minutes of spraying per charge. He builds model cars and sprays a lot of metallic paint. His spray jobs look great.
Worse comes to worse, he can pressure it up with a bicyle pump.

If you're thinking of using the little thumb-pump Coleman tank as a supply, you can only get it to about 10 psi and then the stove relys on heating the supply element to vaporize the fuel supply to the burner. I don't think it'll work as a pressure supply for spraying liquids.
Don

Correction it is the storage recepticle.
Here is the stuff I saw on the FSM forums about it:
"Another alternative is to find an inexpensive compressor, add a pressure regulator calibrated for lower airbrushing settings, and get an old empty propane cylinder or the like (emphasis on empty!!!), such as the disposable ones for Coleman-style stoves and lanterns, and simply use that as your storage recepticle. All you need too do is add the connecting pressure tubing and hardware (inexpensive and available at Lowe's, Home Depot, etc.) and your in business. MIne was built in an afternoon-a few frills added to it- and it works quite well."

The biggest pain is to make sure that the Propane bottle is completely Purged of ALL ALL propane gas. It involves filling & empting quite a few times.......

Thanks Rodders,
I was just going to make that point. I think the Coleman disposable bottles are disposable for a reason. This has "Darwin Award" written all over it...

Shaun

And:




Two VERY sensible pieces of advice. Anyone who doesn't follow this is some kind of fool.

Pressure + Metal = Very Bad News ..Jim

heres an easy way to get it entirely empty, go camping

Luke, before you make some type of weird home made grenade and blow yourself up, go to Wal Mart and pick up a Testor Mighty Mini airbrush/compressor combo. It costs about 49 bucks for the setup. The provided airbrush is far from good but you can change that later when you have the cash. I use the same setup right now but I spliced on an Iwata airbrush. My next step will be to get a good compressor when I have the spare cash. This is a much safer way to go with airbrushing than some homemade contraption that could be dangerous to you and anyone else around you.
The airbrush in the kit will only be good for laying down basecoats. If you need to do camo just make some masks from index cards and spray through them. Works really well.

Mark

For 129 CANADIAN dollars (that's about a buck-fifty to the rest of the world :-) :-) ) I went to Home Depot and bought a air powered finishing nailer and compressor combination made by Delta. I used the finishing nailer once to put on some base boards in my house and then 'filed it' in the garage. The compressor I now use for airbrushing. The air here in Calgary is dry enough that I don't even need a moisture trap. The compressor has a built in regulator and I get flows from arounf 8 psi up to 80 psi with ease. There's a good size air tank attached and the compressor has an auto-shut off when the tank gets full. It fills in just a few minutes and at that point I shut off the compressor anyway and just run of the tank for a good half-hour of quiet, easy-breezy airbrushing.

It just seems to me that by the time you spend $$$ on odds and ends and various plumbing parts to rig up an ex-propane tank/suicide bomb, you might as well go out and buy a set up like the one I'm describing. It's WAY safer and SWMBO thinks I'll still be able to make house repairs with it. Now if I can just remember where did I put that nailer......?

Seriously, it's the safer option.

How much spraying time do you honetly think you are going to get with that homemade death trap?

As I said in your other post about this thing, get a home/garage compressor/tank combo from Wal-Mart, as NebLWeffah did. They go for about $50. Cobbling together some homemade death trap is not the answer.






Wrong again, young apprentice. Going camping and using it will not get all the propane out of it. It actually has to be purged and filled under pressure and vaccuum a few time to totally clean it out. They are also not made to be repeatedly filled and will fail, ie. explode, eventually.

This has to be the scariest thread i've ever seen..Jim

I agree wholeheartedly. Luke - I really hope you're just yanking everyone's chains here by considering this route. The world is a much better place with modelers in it, than gone...

Gunnie

Having been Certified to Fill & Inspect Propane botles at one point in time...... I can say the bigger one is the safer way to go. I know the small ones are refillable BUT they're NOT as safe as the Large reuseable ones.

I've seen First hand what a 20# bottle can do when it "explodes" during Filling.

they need to be inspected (Pressure tested 12 yrs after Manuf. and every 5-7 after that)
A Visual inspection MUST be performed prior to filling........ (major Dents & Pitting are Unsafe)

Luke....
I don't want you to get the wrong impression here... nobody's trying to heap ridicule on you or anything like that, it's just that there's a good deal of very 'long in the tooth' expertise that participates here on the "Big A" and we just want safe practices followed when pursuing our hobby.

When you think about it, we have a dizzying array of potentially lethal or debilitating tools, solvents, paints, scrappers, power tools, compressors, glue, noxious fumes and various other sharp and pokey things at our disposal and a lot of people here have had first hand experience with what can happen when things go wrong.

All we're asking is that you reconsider your options and please take the safest route possible.

I'm just sayin'......
Bob

Hey Matt, my dad has an old propane grill but he now has a charcoal grill and he and my brother tried to remove the propane tank but they couldn't get it removed from a hose or something attached to the grill any ideas on how to get it unhooked? (yes it is one of those large propane tanks)


And what else can I use instead of the refrigerator unit mentioned in the "Making Your Own Airbrush Compressor" feature here on Armorama?

Remeber the Threads on GAS fittings IS Left Handed..... Try "Tightning it" like a normal Bolt.... If that doesn't work...... try some Silicone spray The Brass should't be corroded that bad......

Thanks Matt.

What else can I use instead of the refrigerator unit mentioned in the "Making Your Own Airbrush Compressor" feature here on Armorama?

Any compressor unit from a refrigerator, freezer, air conditioner, small tire filling type, etc. will work.

I still recommend a home/garage compressor combo. No telling how long the other cobbled together pieces will work, or if they will.

If you do cobble your own compressor together, I would still get a commercial tank. Go to a hardware store or compressor supply shop, they sell approved tanks. They are pretty cheap. Wal-Mart used to sell just the tank, called an Air Pig. It is designed to have on your vehicle to fill up a flat or low tire. That is what I used to make my set-up.

The problem is that most of the compressors I've seen are too pricey

The question is, what price do you put on your sefety and possibly your life? Save up some money and go for a real compressor.

Here's a couple of small Compressors form Harbor Freight:
http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=92403
http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=47407

I personally have a big 33 Gallon one (but i don't use it for AB'ing I have a 20cuft CO2 rig for that.