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Well here it is, the AL plus review. As you can see in the photo it has two needle sets, .2 and .4 as well as the 5ml cup. I have given this brush a pretty good workout over the last month or so and I'm happy to say that this H&S brush is every bit as good as the others but it's only half the weight of your average airbrush. Its like holding a decent quality pen and I must say it's a delight to use and I can see where people using there brush all day would be grateful for the reduced weight but even the modeler will appreciate the comfort. Again out of the box I just added paint and started using it, performance is pretty much the same as the other H&S brushes but as they all use the same interchangeable needles and nozzle sets so thats not a surprise. Cleanup is also is very much the same routine except it's all black inside (not the needle and nozzle) and you will need to be a little more careful that you don't miss any dark coloured paint but that's not really a problem of any sort.
I was thinking that as the H&S brushes are fairly similar in performance this would be a shortish review and was wondering what I could add to make it a little more interesting so I decided to buy the seals and seal tool as well as the three seal screw to put into my Silverline and have a look at the setup inside which remember is the same in most of the H&S brushes. Well here is were the fun began, first seal I removed was in the AL plus just to see how easy it was and see if it actually had the three seal screw in it, yes it does ( I knew that...) and while I was having a look at it I dropped it on the carpet, no problem I say and rolled my chair back and picked it up, well the seals were gone, no prizes for guessing where they went....yes under the wheel on my chair. Learned two things at this point, the seals are surprisingly loose in the screw and they are very soft. So now I'm really glad I bought spare seal kits, got the three new seals and was VERY thankful I also bought the screw driver from H&S and here's why.
On the left is the three old seals still together after being run over and the three new seals. I actually thought I had the wrong seal kit, two seals just fit inside the screw so what about the third one? I got onto the people in the know and they say just compress all three into the screw, ok, now is when I found the proper screwdriver is a "big" advantage for H&S seals, the screw and three seals just sit over the needle size spindle and screw it in, I held it pointing upwards so it all didn't fall under a wheel and it screwed in easily, so far so good, I put the needle in and it was very tight, to tight to use, out with the super lube and that improved things greatly but it was still tighter than the seals I ran over, I got in contact with H&S and here is what they told me.
"I am sorry to hear about your issue with the needle. At first you can loosen the screw (#126470) a little bit. The new seals have yet to be softer. If you have an old needle you can push the needle in the Airbrush body back and forth. Otherwise you can push the needle through the front side of your AL but use the back of the needle so that your needle does not bend. I hope I could help you with that and wish you furthermore a lot of fun. "
No worries, the next day, less than 48 hours after installing the seals, I found the brush had gone very tight again so I decided to clean out the lube and do what H&S advised, after running the cleaning brush through a couple of times with thinner I went to run the needle through the brush a few times and see what happens, well I put it in for the first run and it felt like it did with the original seals?? I put it all back together and its been perfect ever since (no lube of any sort), I can only assume there was a bit of gunk or maybe the red stuff that is on the new seals in the hole and was making it sticky tight. Alls well that ends well and it's extremely easy to change seals when you know what to expect.
A very big thank you to Christian at Harder and Steenbeck who supplied the AL plus for this review.
A couple of video's you will find interesting.
A tour of the factory.
and I found this very helpful when researching but please note that all seals in all brushes are now solvent resistant.
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