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frank shic
05-31-2005, 2:43 PM
jim, i just wanted to thank you for your excellent advice regarding the wagner conversion gun. i bought it about a month ago and last weekend finally had the chance to spray latex on 16 cabinet doors as well as 6 drawer fronts and gun worked like a charm after thinning down the paint in a 5:3:1 ration of paint:water:floetrol. i just bought the flexeel hose like you also recommended after spending most the day wrestling with the generic hose included with the PC pancake compressor/nail gun kit.

now my only question is: is there any kind of a holster attachment that can be fitted to a compressor so that the gun doesn't tip/fall off whenever you need to set it down?

i shudder at the thought of how much time i would have spent trying to paint the doors/fronts manually!

Jim Becker
05-31-2005, 3:30 PM
I just set the gun on the edge of a flat surface. As long as there is no tension on your hose (actually possible with Flexeel ;) ) it will stay there. I'm not sure what you mean about a holster for your compressor...never saw anything like that!

frank shic
05-31-2005, 4:19 PM
ah, yes... the tension in the hose is what causes it to tip over - that makes sense. can't wait for this flexeel hose to arrive!

what i meant about the holster is that some of the turbine driven units have some kind of a holster (usually a wire ring) that you can place the spray gun in when not in active use. i was just wondering you could purchases these somewhere.

BTW when are you updating your site? nice kitchen cabinets!

Jim Becker
05-31-2005, 4:31 PM
BTW when are you updating your site?

Yea, I have a bit of work to do on it...in my copious free time. 'Lot's of business travel lately combined with trying to be in the shop on the weekends, obsessing over our adoption journey and just generally not being able to concentrate doesn't make for any web development progress. But you are right, I need to deal with it soon...the site has gotten really stale.

I now understand what you mean about the holster...never having owned a turbine system, it didn't hit me at first. No suggestions, however, but you could build something out of wood! ;)

frank shic
05-31-2005, 5:18 PM
building my own holster out of wood - great idea! thanks again for the advice and good luck with the adoption. fatherhood is an exquisite joy that (dare i say it?) exceeds woodworking!:eek:

fred woltersdorf
05-31-2005, 5:30 PM
frank,how does the paint gun work with the pancake compressor?i have the pc pancake also and i was thinking of getting the wagner but wasn't sure if the compressor could keep up.i don't have the money right now for a bigger unit.

frank shic
05-31-2005, 10:07 PM
fred, the little PC pancake compressor holds up quite well.

i never had to wait for the compressor but then again i let up on the trigger in between passes. if you've never used an hvlp spray gun before and have been manually painting/finishing everything so far, YOU WILL NOT BELIEVE how ridiculously fast you can cover your work for a small sacrifice of green ($129), clean-up time afterwards (probably <10 minutes once you have the process down) and the annoying compressor noise (i wear earplugs all the time in the garage workshop anyways...) there's a definite learning curve in the beginning trying to figure out how quickly to move the gun and thin out the paint/finish but it's worth the professional-looking results.

don't forget to take jim's advice on buying the universal wrench that you'll need to take apart the gun, otherwise, you'll be staring at the nozzle trying to figure out how to get at the recessed nut you'll need to loosen to get at cleaning the needle :p

Tim Sproul
05-31-2005, 10:53 PM
anyone have experience with this gun and shellac?

I'm looking at the inexpensive gravity feed offering from harbor freight since I've read that gun is also a decent gun for not a lot of money.

Mike Deschler
05-31-2005, 11:27 PM
Frank:


How did you arrive at the paint/water/foetrol ratios?

frank shic
05-31-2005, 11:53 PM
tim, i'll let you know about spraying shellac with this gun in a couple of weeks (if you can wait that long!!!) as i'm trying to get to my ultimate ORIGINAL goal for all these power tools: the kitchen cabinets!

mike, i arrived at the ratio for the paint in a highly scientific manner: i swiped them off of someone else's web site!

seriously, the ratio that i was able to remember was something like 10:4:2 of paint:water:floetrol so i split the ratio to 5:2:1 (simple division that i can handle!) but i found that the spray was still a little too thick so i added another part of water and found that it was just right - anymore water and i'm afraid that the whole mix would have run all over the place. plus, it's a fairly easy ratio to remember 5:3:1 of paint:water:floetrol :rolleyes:

Jim Becker
06-01-2005, 8:43 AM
anyone have experience with this gun and shellac?

Yes. It sprays shellac just as well as other finishes. Obviously, you want to do your cleanup right away, however, with this or any other gun with a fast curing finish such as shellac.

John Cavanaugh
06-07-2005, 1:49 AM
Jim B et al,

Anyone have any information on recommended viscosity settings for this sprayer with various types of material??

Since most of us have converged on the regulator settings from gleempaint I thought maybe we could converge on ideal viscosity settings as well.

First thing Ill be spraying is actually Latex. Dont worry, Im not painting Mahogany its for some MDF baseboards. ;-)


Oh yeah, one more thing. Are the viscosity cups uniform in size (ie. across brands) or will the settings be different for different "cups".

--
John Cavanaugh

frank shic
06-07-2005, 2:08 AM
john, i'm not sure what the EXACT viscosity setting for my last job was but i can tell you that i thinned the latex enough so that it would drip off of a paint stick in individual drops - something i picked up from the sage of all finishers, bob flexner!

5:3:1 paint:water:floetrol worked for me!