Cleaning your airbrush doesn't need to be torture!

I am a realist. I don't believe cleaning your airbrush needs to be a huge, drawn out procedure that you have to endure every time you use your brush.

I don't believe it's necessary, or worth my time, to pull my airbrush entirely apart to clean it every time I use it. I only do what is necessary to keep my brush in good working order - and every once in while, I give it the royal treatment.

(NOTE: This does not apply if you are using non-acrylic paint)

Think of cleaning your airbrush like your cleaning your car's exterior... if it is covered in mud, you have multiple options: you can leave it (letting it dry and making it much harder to remove later), give it a rinse to get rid of the worst of it, clean it with soap and water to get 95% of the dirt off or take the day off work and give it a full blown detail job.

The same applies to cleaning your airbrush.

If you are painting a project that is going to take multiple days to complete, you don't need to clean your airbrush every night. Simply rinse the cup out with water to remove the bulk of the paint and fill the cup with water - then walk away...that's it. The water keeps any remaining paint in the cup moist and stops it from drying on the cup and brush parts.

I have left my airbrush like this for days (topping up water if it evaporates) and have never had a problem.

If things are getting really grubby, cleaning your airbrush with soap and water is the way to go.

There are a gazillion different products you can use to clean the cup and brush including products specifically designed for cleaning airbrushes.

Personally, I don't buy it.

I use what ever I have around the house to clean my brush - this includes windex window cleaner, fantastic, dish soap etc. They all work just fine. The key is to rinse everything really well with pure water when you are done so that the acidic or basic components of the cleaner don't eat away the finish on your brush or react with the seals inside.

If you would like the ultimate homemade concoction... it's 1 cup water, 1 ounce windex, 1 drop dish soap. I mix this up and put it in the bottle that some store bought airbrush cleaner in to make myself look more "professional" when people are watching me work :)

If your airbrush is mis-behaving or not acting right in some way or another, take it all apart to clean it... this is synonymous with re-booting a computer. Before even bothering to try and diagnose the problem - restart - it is likely to make the problem go away.

When I take my airbrush apart I lay all the bits on a white non fuzzy towel (like a tea towel) and scrub everything with household cleaners. The white towel comes in handy because you can quickly tell if you are removing paint as it will mark up the towel. When everything is clean, I rinse with clean water, dry and reassemble.

When cleaning your airbrush avoid using anything linty - it won't ruin your airbrush or anything - but those little linty bits and fibers tend to sneak into the smallest of spaces and reeking all sorts of havoc. The biggest culprit is Q-tips...while handy, the little cotton fibers get caught up in the brush all the time.

There's one more stage of cleaning that some people employ - but I stay away from this technique like the plague... ultrasonic cleaning.

If you are unfamiliar with ultrasonic cleaning, it's a process often used to clean jewelry. Basically, you place your ring, necklace, airbrush in a metal tray and lower it into a solution and then flick a switch that sends ultrasonic pulses through the solution removing dirt and debris from the tiniest of tiny areas .... sounds good right?

Well - the solution used in this process varies depending on the particular metal plating on the item being cleaned... if you don't know your chemistry it's very possible that your could remove all the plating from your brush and it's parts - or worse, you could transfer plating from one part to another.

Are plating issues with an ultrasonic cleaning system a certainty? Probably not - but I am no chemist, so I am not willing to take my chances. If you know your chemistry - have at it!