Self-built spray booth for airbrush work

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Hanuller
Posts: 7
Joined: Thu Aug 09, 2007 3:26 pm
Location: Scotland
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Self-built spray booth for airbrush work

Post by Hanuller »

You will find the following report on my website http://www.welt-im-modell.com as well.

Sophisticated modelling can hardly be done without an airbrush. Unfortunately the paint spray tends to spread throughout the whole room, although using a spray booth smaller paintwork can be done inside buildings. But industrial solutions are quite expensive, so we decided to build a spray booth ourselves. Here is our step-by-step pictorial - please note that it had not been a prefabricated kit but was built according to our own ideas!

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We needed:
- Paulownia glued wood plate 80 x 60 x 1.8 cm (31.5 x 23.6 x 0.7 in)
- L-shaped aluminium profile, 200 cm (78.7 in)
- 3 plates of acrylic glass, 50 x 50 x 0.25 cm (19.7 x 19.7 x 0.1 in)
- cooker hood, width 50 cm (19.7 in)
- flexible exhaust air tube
- various screws, nuts and washers
- 8 felt pads for chair legs
- revolving stamp holder
- 2 round cork table mats
- various glues


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First of all we had to buy some plates of various materials, hardware and a cheap cooker hood from the DIY store. We spent a total amount of about EUR 70.-- (GBP 63.--)


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We decided to remove the vitreous fume screen which would have been in our way especially when changing the filter.


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With the help of several tools dismantling the screen was no problem at all.


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Our spray booth should be as handy as possible, so we chose the extremely light Paulownia wood for the ground plate. It is used for making guitars as well.


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On the bottom we fixed some felt pads.


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Before mounting the cooker hood we removed the round plate where the exhaust hose would be connected to the hood later. That was quite easy using a hammer and a screwdriver.


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Then we fitted the hose adapter that had come with the hood into the hole.


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Our picture shows the exhaust air hose still being folded together. It can be extended up to 200 cm (78.7 in). Connecting the hose to the hood would be the final step.


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First we marked the position of the hood.


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Then we had to drill some mounting holes into the sheet...


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...and mark their exact position on the wood that had to be drilled as well.


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Six screws, nuts and some washers...


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...provide a good connection between the hood and the wooden plate and thus create a safe stand of the whole thing.


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With a hacksaw we cut the 200 cm (78.7 in) long aluminium profile into four equal parts.


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For deburring the parts we used an ordinary file.


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Cutting the acrylic glass with a sharp knife was no big deal; we used one of the aluminium parts instead of a genuine T-square.


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To screw the vitreous wall parts to the body of the cooker hood we had to drill many holes, into the metal (also into the aluminium profiles)...


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...and into the acrylic glass. Before that we had to copy the position of the holes using a permanent marker. Drilling all these holes was really the most tiring part of our work - but it was necessary.


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Finally we could screw the first side wall to the hood body. Before doing that we had removed the protective film from the acrylic glass.


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Mounting the second side wall gave us our first impression of what the spray booth would look like in the end.


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At that time we had realised that the top wall would sag, so we decided to reinforce it by one of the spare acrylic glass strips that had been left over after cutting the side walls.


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We stuck the strip vertically to the front edge of the top wall with some super glue. After that sagging was no longer an issue.


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After the top wall had been mounted to the side walls we adjusted them accurately and screwed them to the ground plate.


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After that the main part of our spray booth was finished!


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Thanks to all the fixing points it is very sturdy and not at all wobbly.


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The final step, mounting the exhaust air hose...


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...was no problem at all.


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A rotary plate is really useful if you want to paint a small model with an airbrush. We decided to build that ourselves from a revolving stamp holder and two round cork table mats.


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We glued the cork mats together and provided them with a centred notch at the bottom to make them fit onto the stamp holder. The plate can be revolved easily and is tilt resistant.


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That’s it! But of course there are some things we have to think about, e.g. covering the vitreous walls with cling film to prevent the paint spray from spoiling them.


Cheers,
Volker
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Bigglesof266
Posts: 1025
Joined: Tue Feb 10, 2009 9:59 am
Location: Australia

Re: Self-built spray booth for airbrush work

Post by Bigglesof266 »

Good stuff. Ta. Concur a spray booth of some kind really is a necessity for airbrushing. Con of course is that commercial purpose built modelling spray booths have always been absurdly expensive with limited availability options locally such that only a seriously hard core modeller with an adult pay packet could really justify the outlay. Although desiring a proper ventilated booth myself for an aeon, I've always deferred the spend getting by with an ersatz compromise, ie; a cardboard box attacked with a hobby knife, holes cut in the right places with a supplementary powerful but cheap desktop house fan drawing overspray and solvent fumes through a ventilation hole in the back with old stocking (pantyhose for gen y&x) material for filters. Crude, but it works reasonably well ..and no cleanup required other than wiping over with a tack rag in between jobs.

Although upon seeing this, I might just have a go at putting together something better come 'I have time for a new project' time. Cheers.
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