Do I need a Spray Booth for airbrushes if I use a rebreather?

[Malakai]

I have an industrial rebreather (like pest control people use). My painting room is around 7ft x 12ft. It -IS- enclosed and I cannot open a window. Spray booths are just insanely expensive or really small. I was hoping I could get away with using my industrial rebreather. I'll be using acrylics with my airbrush except for occasionally when I prime or varnish with spray cans.

Thanks for the help.

[chromedog]

Spray booths serve two purposes.

The main one is to contain the overspray.
The other one is to take the fumes and overspray away to 'somewhere else' (good booths have extractor fans that take the fumes outside - just like your rangehood in the kitchen).

If you can't open your room up, then spray booth or not (dependent upon how much spraying you do inside), the room is going to fill with overspray particles AND fumes - which might not bother you with a respirator on, but it will get on EVERYTHING else - and make your room look like it played host to a dyslexic taggers meeting.

[Symrivven]

A spraying boot can be made relatively cheap. Take a cardboard box, supermarkets have lots of those make a hole in the back. From a DIY store you can get tubing people use to vent their dryer, they also sell fans that fit those tubes ranging from very cheap to expensive, depending on the amount of air you want them to move.

Its not perfect buts a good an cheap start.

[Bloodknight]

the room is going to fill with overspray particles AND fumes - which might not bother you with a respirator on, but it will get on EVERYTHING else - and make your room look like it played host to a dyslexic taggers meeting.

Hmm, I'd say overspray is pretty much minimal with airbrushes, else you couldn't paint minis with them; if your overspray covers more than your model and maybe a newspaper under that, you're (that's not a "chromedog you") doing it wrong. Fumes aren't a huge problem when you use acrylics either. The rebreather should do it, IMO, I don't even bother with using one, I use one of those surgeon's masks.

[chromedog]

You still follow the usual procedures for spraying - start before and end after the model. That is STILL classed as "overspray" and even acrylics give out fumes. Not as noxious as enamels, perhaps, but they are still there. Reason #1 still applies. Containment.

[Malakai]

A spraying boot can be made relatively cheap. Take a cardboard box, supermarkets have lots of those make a hole in the back. From a DIY store you can get tubing people use to vent their dryer, they also sell fans that fit those tubes ranging from very cheap to expensive, depending on the amount of air you want them to move.

Its not perfect buts a good an cheap start.

This sounds like something I'd have to start off with as just buying the airbrush setup (brush and compressor and odds and ends) is having my fiance in fits! but if I'm in an enclosed area where does the hose run to?

By the way, I think I'd use one of those big plastic storage bins and cut a hole in the back instead of using a cardboard box. What do you think?

[Symrivven]

I don't know where your closest window is, the tube could go there. If its to far away a fan and a filter might do the trick to, with the fan sucking the air in the box trough the filter. you can craft the filter or all kinds of material, the stuff used in kitchenhoods, some types of vacuum cleaner bags, anything that's build to filter small particles from the air basically. And a big plastic box could work to, or even better if its (semi)transparent.