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How to Make Your Own Homemade Airbrush

The idea to write this article came to me when I found a video of homemade airbrush on the web. I got curious and started to look for some more. First, I didn’t believe that there are many people making their own airbrushes but you’ll be surprised that the number is huge. I’ve chosen the best of them (in my opinion) and included it in this post.

I’m not sure if any of you are going to use any of next advices maybe if you desperately want to try airbrushing or need to do some very simple art work on your airplane model, just give it a try ;)

Let’s start with the simplest one

Syringe Airbrush in 10 minutes

All we need for construction of this airbrush is syringe and empty ball-pen refill (as shown below).

First you have to remove the ball from the ball-pen refill and stick the needle of the syringe through the plastic lead. The syringe then works as a gravity feed airbrush cup. Connect the air hose on the other end of the lead and it’s done!
The strange piece of plastic on the pen refill is a kind of pressure regulator. The refill has few holes and by moving the regulator we will release some air trough those holes and the pressure will decrease.

Syringe airbrush with siphon feed

Identical idea, but instead of the whole syringe we use just the end where we connect the needle, and glue it to some bottle lid. The lid on the bottle should have a small hole to let the air in, which will push the paint up into the needle.

Ball-pen Airbrush, 2-nd Version

This time you won’t need the syringe as the airbrush will be siphon feed. You will need the ball-pen (simple one), some reservoir and maybe a piece of metal plate or maybe you’ll be fine with some wire.

Simple, isn’t it? The author of this airbrush recommends to cut the tip of ball-pen refill in 15-30 degree angle after removing the ball.

On the picture above author used as an airbrush body a piece of wire and taped it to the pen body. The tip has to be cut, otherwise there is going to be a blob of paint which will finish on your art work. On the picture bellow is the same construction, but instead of wire author used rather a metal plate.

Another schema of possible similar construction

Really simple constructions, don’t you think? That’s not everything. The next construction isn’t that easy but I had to include it here.

Quality Home-Made Airbrush

The guy who made it is really skilled. He shared all his drawings so if someone is interested, here you go. Pity, but no step by step instructions, just the drawings and pictures of final product (the pictures are low quality but that’s the best I could get).

The whole airbrush is made out of brass, except for some stainless steel parts.

Check This Out!

This is everything I could find that had some instructions or drawings that could be used to help in case you’d like to build it yourself (I doubt that anyone is going to do it anyway).

The purpose of this article is to show that there are people who want to do airbrush even if they can not afford it. Maybe, they are just bored or on the other side interested and they enjoy doing such constructions.

I have seen more home-made airbrushes that deserve to be mentioned, but the lack of the info didn’t get them here.

home made airbrushhome made airbrushhome made airbrush

If you find this interesting and have something similar (like airbrush) made on your own that you want to share, don’t hesitate and comment below…

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3 Comments on “How to Make Your Own Homemade Airbrush”

  • That’s cool,  I would not have thought people could make their own airbrush. I had a hard enough time getting mine back together after cleaning it.  :]

    • Yep, I was surprised myself when I discovered this :)

  • Very interesting, thanks!