I’ll state up front that I’ve never used a spray gun, only used a paint brush or rattle cans.

However, I do have an old Craftsman compressor (33 gal/150 psi) & recently bought a cheap HF Purple handled HVLP spray gun because it had good reviews & was on sale.

So, we just updated our kitchen table chairs with Canadel Windsor chairs as show, except the seat was a dark maple & the back/legs were a French Country white. Our three island swivelI chairs were similar in style, but made of white oak with a polyurethane finish. My wife asked if I could paint the older chairs. Yes dear.

I completely disassembled the 3 chairs, including removal of the fan spindles which later turned out to be an experience reassembling them. I brush applied a coat of poly to the seat & then a wipe-on poly coat to finish it off. Looked great!

I attempted to spray a coat of matching white latex using the HF spray gun.

It was soon obvious that the 1.4mm (0.055”) tip was too small, so I drilled it open to 2.26 mm (0.089”), leaving only about a 0.005” wall at the tip opening. I increased the pressure from 50 psi to 65 psi. That worked better, but still the gun clogged up fast. I removed the paint filter & that helped a bit. I increased the pressure to the gun max. of 70 psi and noticed that the air pressure didn’t shut off when I released the trigger. The rod pushing the trigger back would push it only part way allowing the compressor tank to continue discharging. The tank pressure dropped down to ~ 30 psi, so I was able to do only the legs or back at a time before I had to stop to let the compressor recharge itself.

I finally finished the latex painting (2 coats) & then applied two coats of Polycrylic clear coat. Despite everything going wrong (my fault) it really did look good & the wife was happy. Mission accomplished!

Then when cleaning up and I noticed that the compressor wouldn’t fully charge for use in my work shop. Taking the head off to check on the compression I noticed that the compression ring had a section that was broken off, thereby preventing the compressor to charge properly. So I took things apart, cleaned everything & ordered a replacement cylinder sleeve kit with O-Rings. The kit should arrive next Mon – Wed.

Lesson learned the hard way. Next time, if there is one, I’ll get the correct spray gun, perhaps a HPLV.