For Christmas last year, I received a Citadel Spray Gun. I’ve been meaning to use it for a while, but I finally got around to giving it a spin this evening. I had three primed Hammerheads and a new pot of Knarloc Green Foundation for their base coat. I broke out the spray gun and propellant, mixed up the paint/water blend as instructed in the manual (and on the paint jar), and went to town. I have to say, I’m pleased with the results:

The gun was easy to use, especially for someone like myself who has never worked with an airbrush before. There’s not a lot of fine control, although between the propellant valve and the paint cap there’s just enough adjustability to control the intensity of the spray. There was very little overspray (which always makes my wife happy; she hates seeing paint on the concrete), and the coverage was smooth and consistent. Having the speed and coverage of a spray can combined with the drying speed and lack of fumes of water-based acrylic paint makes me very happy. I still need to spray the bottoms of the hulls and turrets, as well as the inside faces of the engine nacelles, but that should go quickly enough.

My only concern about continuing to use the spray gun is the cost of propellant. Roughly one-third to half of a can was used up in getting three tanks mostly done. At most, I’m likely to get the undersides of these vehicles done, and then possibly a Piranha or two painted before I run out. At $8 a can, I’m glad that I don’t have too many more vehicles to paint this way. On the other hand, I don’t know if I would use the gun so much as to warrant the cost of an air compressor-powered solution (and apparently, you can hook up the Citadel sprayer to an air compressor with an adapter). Even with the price of propellant, though, I’d still give the spray gun a solid thumbs-up. For an airbrush amateur like myself, it’s a welcome addition to my painting toolkit.