Once more unto the breach

After more than 2 months, I really needed to practice some more airbrushing. There's only so much you can do on a model without the need for painting, and I don't want to just glue them together and start on the next.

I started priming the less visible places of the Abrams. I did the inside of the fenders with black primer. Following a recent tip, I did long strokes accross the entire model, slowly building up paint coverage. This went really well. The dry-tip is almost under control, although it's still needed far too frequently, if you ask me.

Constantly cleaning the tip does leave residue and paint flakes in the nozzle and around the tip, which results in the occasional splotch ending up in the paintwork. I think I just want to do too much in one go and need to stop to clean the nozzle more often.

Switching to the grey primer again was more difficult. I'm not sure if I didn't clean the brush poroperly or if there's something iffy about this particular paint. Coverage just seems difficult to get, unless I paint it really wet. I stopped halfway to let it dry and add a second layer later.

The current problem is that there seems to be a buildup of paint on the bottom of the nozzle. Since it's pointed away from me, I only notice this when it's too late, i.e. when numerous thick drops of paint suddenly fly towards the model and ruin the paintjob.

Lastly, I tried putting another coat of gold on the Enterprise's display stand, but here also the droplets of paint made it worse instead of better.

Examing the airbrush, when I retract the needle from the nozzle, I noticed that the needle is not centered inside the nozzle but sticks to one side. The needle is not bent, because if I turn it 180 degrees, it still sticks to the same side of the nozzle. It must be the internal guidance of the needle somewhere. I've yet to determine if this is the cause or has nothing to do with the current issues.