Spray booth

 On AIR1 I build a spray booth out of plywood. I purchased a blower motor with a sealed motor, to reduce the chance of fire. I brought that motor with me. 

I’m planning to build another spray booth and install it in the basement. 

I looked for a compressor on line that was smallish and quiet. I did not want a hobby compressor because I want it to run a nail or staple gun during layout construction.

I found a compressor from California Air Tools

https://www.amazon.com/California-Air-Tools-CAT-1P1060S-Compressor/dp/B01LYHYHEA/ref=pd_ci_mcx_mh_mcx_views_0?pd_rd_w=h1b2a&content-id=amzn1.sym.225b4624-972d-4629-9040-f1bf9923dd95%3Aamzn1.symc.40e6a10e-cbc4-4fa5-81e3-4435ff64d03b&pf_rd_p=225b4624-972d-4629-9040-f1bf9923dd95&pf_rd_r=MAE4KWKE3ANQ1VJV7Y40&pd_rd_wg=KZkMm&pd_rd_r=6fe3a471-3ac3-4d85-accf-48f42cff8d15&pd_rd_i=B01LYHYHEA&th=1

It’s very quiet, and not terribly expensive. 

The spray booth at AIR1 was just a box of 3/4” plywood with a large open side. It had a short spray shield on the top, but I found that it needed to be extended, I was getting overspray escaping from the front. It had a hole on top where I mounted the “Squirrel Cage” blower, and ducted the exhaust outside through a hole in the wall. 

There are a million plans for spray booths on line, most are far more expensive than I ever needed. It’s not that I didn’t airbrush a lot, I did. It’s just that it’s been my experience that model railroaders always publish instructions for projects that are unnecessarily complicated and expensive*. When I first considered airbrushing all the spray booths back then were $300. (Admittedly my blower motor, from Grainger **was $75). Finally I just built one. (It’s just a dam box with one side left off!).

Anyway, I need to start painting again. It’s time.

 I’ll let you know how it goes.


* I first realized this when I Re-motored my first Athearn locomotive. I put off doing this for about a year then one day I just started tinkering. I realized that re-motoring an Athearn locomotive, including re-wheeling, filing burrs off the gears, etc, took MINUTES. Yes, eventually it took overnight to let the silicone dry, but the process was EASY. It was at this point that I began to look at model railroading “How-To” articles far more skeptically. And eventually became quite angry at this conspiracy amongst the model railroad press to build up this veil of mystery over this hobby. I have never yet met a modeler who has not found a more labor intensive, expensive,  and written a more complicated explanation of how to perform a simple task.


** We had a saying, at the studios, about Grainger. “If you absolutely insist on paying one third MORE, and NEED it three days late, buy it from Grainger”. I now buy anything of that nature from McMaster-Carr.



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