Tuesday, September 28, 2010

AB500 Portable Spray Booth

SprayboothI've always wanted a spray booth. While I do all my airbrush work in the garage and for health reasons wear a spray mask, there is still a smell produced that pervades the next door kitchen. The atmosphere gets pretty thick as well which isn't pleasant to work in.

Normal spray booths don't work for me. They need to permanent setting and a connection to the outside world to blow the fumes away. I don't have the space for that, so when I spotted the AB500 portable booth in the Hobby's catalogue for a very reasonable £69, I ordered one.

The booth arrived in a couple of days and on unpacking it I found a box the size of a small suitcase. The front opens out to make the booth part and a cable comes out of the back for power. Unlike other similar devices, the whole lot can be folded up again for easy storage and transport. The cord even retracts inside at the push of a button - a feature I played with quite a bit to start with.

Air is sucked through a blue filter at the back of the device. These filters are available for a fiver. I'll check the instructions to see how long they should last and order spares.

The photo shows the G1 Class 14 getting it's coat of pale green. The model sits on a 6 inch turntable that came with the device. After spraying for around half an hour, there was still a thinners smell but nothing like as bad as before. The air was still thin. Mind you I'll not be eshewing the facemask but this is a definite improvement.

3 comments:

Colin 't Hart said...

Great! I can't find the product in their online catalog, can you post a link?

Phil Parker said...

Sadly not - I had to ring them up as it seems the website is more than a little behind the times. If it helps, branches of WH Smith usually carry the paper version of the catalogue.

Anonymous said...

The Spray Booth is available at www.follymodels.co.uk and an extraction hose is now available as an add on. The price has gone up though, it's £87.95 in the 2011Expo catalogue but £75 at Folly Models.