Spray finishing thoughts

I broke down and bought a HVLP spray system. After using it a few times my thoughts are:

For applying Minwax wood conditioner it's faster than by hand. For applying stain, it's faster than hand. In both cases I still have to wipe off the excess by hand.

For poly, I can just spray a coat or two and be done- no brushing required. The poly application is where you typically get the runs and brush marks anyway...


I guess I somehow thought if I bought a HVLP system I would never have to do any finishing work by hand- far from the truth..
Having said that it's faster to spray than brush so I am still happy.

Your thoughts.

Carl, you may have already discovered this, but spraying anything "slow drying" like oil based products isn't necessarily the best thing...the overspray is sticky for a long time, and the recoat interval is also long, etc. The real value for a spray system comes with faster drying products like waterborne finishes that can be recoated many times in a single day to get to the final finish. I spray 3-8 coats of clear on projects and in most cases, that's a single day of finishing. With an oil based product, in many cases, two a day is about the limit and then there is the need to abrade between coats, especially with any kind of "poly" to insure adhesion.

If you want to eliminate the hand work, switch to water based finishes or shellac or lacquer. All of these dry fast enough so that you can avoid hand work.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jim Becker

Carl, you may have already discovered this, but spraying anything "slow drying" like oil based products isn't necessarily the best thing...the overspray is sticky for a long time, and the recoat interval is also long, etc. The real value for a spray system comes with faster drying products like waterborne finishes that can be recoated many times in a single day to get to the final finish. I spray 3-8 coats of clear on projects and in most cases, that's a single day of finishing. With an oil based product, in many cases, two a day is about the limit and then there is the need to abrade between coats, especially with any kind of "poly" to insure adhesion.

---

Thanks Jim, I am still learning about spray finishing. I used oil based poly for years but my girlfriend doesn't like the amber color so moving over to water based.

We are building a vacation home in CO so I will take my Earlex 5500 there and use to apply the stain for the T&G ceiling and the trim. Trim and doors will get multiple coats of water based poly on top. The main advantage of spraying stain is it's way quicker than brushing on...

I bought the Fuji Q3 for my home shop so the Earlex will go to CO for work on the house and then stay in my wood shop there