Russell Smallwood
04-05-2010, 7:22 PM
Oh the carnage
So.... I have two sets of bunk beds to finish, for economy's sake, I decided to go with Poplar and a super neato cool old fashioned milk paint finish. I have never used Milk paint before, but the concept sounded good and at the price they charge for it, it had to be awesome right? Ordered a couple of gallons (well, enough mix to make a couple of gallons).
Meanwhile, I came across this thread:
http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=133451
And thought... hey! That sounds like a great way to apply all that expensive Milk Paint I just bought. So I picked one up.
First, to be fair, I have to admit that I have trouble buttering toast, so finishing is not an intuitive thing for me, nor do I have any experience at all, so my first inclination is to assume that I'm doing something wrong but after trying almost everything I can thing of, I am still having a heck of a time getting this combination of equipment/material to work.
First, I can only use the sprayer in airless (paint my house) mode, forget about HVLP, it just expedites the problem. No matter how much I thin the paint, the sprayer continually loses its prime (in both modes) and I have to re-prime in order to get paint to come out of the nozzle. After priming and switching back to spray mode, I will get material (sometimes) but it won't last very long before I lose pressure, some bad things happen and I have to re-prime the pump and cross my fingers that it sprays paint when I put it back on "Spray".
The milk paint itself is very foamy, and I'm wondering if that is contributing to the problem. I have some circumstantial evidence of this because when I clean out the sprayer and put the suction/siphon in a big bucket of water, it seems to function the way I would expect it to. It sprays and sprays without complaint in both HVLP and Airless modes. So I'm almost, but not entirely, absolutely convinced that it is the nature of the material.
So, after all that, does anyone have any experience with this stuff? Is this absolutely the wrong type of equipment to use for the task? Am I doing something wrong?
Any input appreciated.
Thanks!
So.... I have two sets of bunk beds to finish, for economy's sake, I decided to go with Poplar and a super neato cool old fashioned milk paint finish. I have never used Milk paint before, but the concept sounded good and at the price they charge for it, it had to be awesome right? Ordered a couple of gallons (well, enough mix to make a couple of gallons).
Meanwhile, I came across this thread:
http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=133451
And thought... hey! That sounds like a great way to apply all that expensive Milk Paint I just bought. So I picked one up.
First, to be fair, I have to admit that I have trouble buttering toast, so finishing is not an intuitive thing for me, nor do I have any experience at all, so my first inclination is to assume that I'm doing something wrong but after trying almost everything I can thing of, I am still having a heck of a time getting this combination of equipment/material to work.
First, I can only use the sprayer in airless (paint my house) mode, forget about HVLP, it just expedites the problem. No matter how much I thin the paint, the sprayer continually loses its prime (in both modes) and I have to re-prime in order to get paint to come out of the nozzle. After priming and switching back to spray mode, I will get material (sometimes) but it won't last very long before I lose pressure, some bad things happen and I have to re-prime the pump and cross my fingers that it sprays paint when I put it back on "Spray".
The milk paint itself is very foamy, and I'm wondering if that is contributing to the problem. I have some circumstantial evidence of this because when I clean out the sprayer and put the suction/siphon in a big bucket of water, it seems to function the way I would expect it to. It sprays and sprays without complaint in both HVLP and Airless modes. So I'm almost, but not entirely, absolutely convinced that it is the nature of the material.
So, after all that, does anyone have any experience with this stuff? Is this absolutely the wrong type of equipment to use for the task? Am I doing something wrong?
Any input appreciated.
Thanks!