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Thread: First time shooting paint

  1. #1
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    First time shooting paint

    I have an older Fuji Minimite 4 that sprays clear finishes with ease. I sprayed an oil enamel paint and primer once on a powermatic 72 that has a slight orange peel texture to it. Im unsure if that is because i didnt thin the paint, or if it had more to do with the temperature being in the 40s in my garage at the time. Now, i need to spray a few floating shelves white, and need them to be flawless. I know very little about paints, and planned on leaning on the guys at sherwin williams for advice, but also wanted to check here too. Im painting poplar.

  2. #2
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    You may very well need to thin an oil based enamel to flow properly through your gun, depending on the gun setup. Oil based paints through a sprayer is often a "thankless task" because of the sticky overspray and long try times. Spraying is better suited to faster drying finishes including water borne products. Water borne finishes can't be "thinned" very much (5-10% max), however, so proper gun setup is critical. Consider using water borne finishes that are designed for spraying, such as those from Target Coatings, General Finishes, etc. That said, the proper gun setup can spray most things you can buy at Sherwin Williams, including ProClassic. Do note that most SW stores/folks tend to know a lot about spraying solvent based products but in my experience, they haven't been as knowledgable about their water borne finishes. Maybe it's my local store; but I suspect not.
    --

    The most expensive tool is the one you buy "cheaply" and often...

  3. #3
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    Use General Finishes pigmented Enduro Poly in the white version. It sprays very well, and is quite durable in use. Like Jim says, a coat dries to touch in less than ten minutes, and can be sanded in a couple of hours. It is waterborne, so gun clean-up is easy. I spray it right out of the can with a 3-stage turbine and a Fuji HVLP gun. My usual schedule is to spray two coats, wait a couple hours, de-nib, and spray one or two more coats.

  4. #4
    Most of the time orange peal is caused by the finish not being thinned enough. It can also be caused by holding the gun too far away. The 40 degree weather would only help the orange peal problem. It's usually very hot weather that increases the problem with orange peal.

  5. #5
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    In my experience with enduro var, it only orange peels on me when its cold. Im not sure about the oil paint, but it makes sense that it wasnt thinned enough/gun wasnt moving enough air, and to make matters worse the cold prevented it from leveling properly and self-correcting. Still, it is very very slight, and i didnt do much prep to the cabinet. Very pleased with the result. However, that was the first and definitely last time i freaking spray oil paint. The clean up was AWFUL. So awful. You do that once and you will be cured for life.

    I am definitely not spraying oil paint for these shelves. I wanted to stick to water based paints. I just was unsure of latex versus other varieties and which sprayed best for a moderate HVLP.

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by Patrick Kane View Post
    In my experience with enduro var, it only orange peels on me when its cold. Im not sure about the oil paint, but it makes sense that it wasnt thinned enough/gun wasnt moving enough air, and to make matters worse the cold prevented it from leveling properly and self-correcting. Still, it is very very slight, and i didnt do much prep to the cabinet. Very pleased with the result. However, that was the first and definitely last time i freaking spray oil paint. The clean up was AWFUL. So awful. You do that once and you will be cured for life.

    I am definitely not spraying oil paint for these shelves. I wanted to stick to water based paints. I just was unsure of latex versus other varieties and which sprayed best for a moderate HVLP.
    If you don't want to work with oil based paint you might consider a pigmented lacquer. To spray water based paint you need different spray equipment. Waterborne finishes are so thick the paint needs to be pressurized to work right. There are a few guns out there that the cup is pressurized but they are few and far between. Harbor Freight makes a two quart pressure pot sprayer comes with the cup, gun and hoses for around 50-60 bucks that will spray a waterborne finish alright. If this something you need to spray a lot of paint there is also a tank available that holds two gallons of paints. I have one of those which I have fitted with 25' of hose. When I work in someones house I can sit the sprayer in the center of the room and spray everything.

  7. #7
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    We'll see how it goes. I picked up a quart of latex and the proper extender/thinner product to improve the flow of latex for my gun. This doesnt have to be perfect, so im hoping the combo works well enough.

    Haven heard of pigmented lacquers, ill need to look into them. Is there a particular brand, or does Sherwin Williams carry the product?

  8. #8
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    +1 for GF Enduro Poly white base or tinted to an off white. I've sprayed many gallons on cabinet jobs and it is easy to get a perfect, smooth finish. If you desire an off-white, General Finishes will tint to match any of the Benjamin Moore colors.
    Scott Vroom

    I started with absolutely nothing. Now, thanks to years of hard work, careful planning, and perseverance, I find I still have most of it left.

  9. #9
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    Patrick, for shelves you do not want common latex paint...you want 100% acrylic paint, such as SW ProClassic or BM Impervo. Why? Because regular "latex" paint commonly exhibits a property called blocking...where anything on the shelf sticks to the shelf. Going with a 100% acrylic coating prevents that from being a problem if you can't use something like Target Coatings EM6500 or GF Milk Paint. (the latter isn't really "milk paint"...its a colored acrylic and sprays wonderfully)
    --

    The most expensive tool is the one you buy "cheaply" and often...

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Becker View Post
    Patrick, for shelves you do not want common latex paint...you want 100% acrylic paint, such as SW ProClassic or BM Impervo. Why? Because regular "latex" paint commonly exhibits a property called blocking...where anything on the shelf sticks to the shelf. Going with a 100% acrylic coating prevents that from being a problem if you can't use something like Target Coatings EM6500 or GF Milk Paint. (the latter isn't really "milk paint"...its a colored acrylic and sprays wonderfully)
    Did not know that, but good to know. So i think i actually have both types from Sherwin williams. I recently took down the upper cabinets over my range and replaced with a range hood and did a marble subway tile. Anyway, long way of saying i recently needed white paint to redo the crown and ceiling from slightly modifying the kitchen. One can is labeled Duration interior acrylic latex, and the other is Pro Classic interior acrylic latex. The latter is the one i think the sold me for the moulding.

    I truly know very little about opaque finishes. I am interested in what you all are describing. Assuming a tinted lacquer/poly is infinitely more durable than paint. Are these finishes as thin as other waterbourne clear finishes?

  11. #11
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    Tinted finishes tend to be more viscous just because they contain a ton of solids to provide the color. So the gun setup is pretty much different than when spraying clears, even when it's "the same products", such as Target Coating EM6000 Clear and EM6500 colored (any BM or SW color you want). I found the GF Milk Paint acrylic to be a little more forgiving in consistency than the EM6500 on a recent guitar project and would buy it again when I didn't need a specific color match like is available from Target. Spraying the SW or BM products I mentioned above requires a gun that's setup well for the process or you end up with spattering and a "not very nice" end result. I use a pressurized gun now (from Homestead Finishing) that includes the 3M PPS cup system and it pretty much can spray anything I've wanted to spray with great control.
    --

    The most expensive tool is the one you buy "cheaply" and often...

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by Patrick Kane View Post
    We'll see how it goes. I picked up a quart of latex and the proper extender/thinner product to improve the flow of latex for my gun. This doesnt have to be perfect, so im hoping the combo works well enough.

    Haven heard of pigmented lacquers, ill need to look into them. Is there a particular brand, or does Sherwin Williams carry the product?
    If you walk into a Sherwin Williams chances are they will tell you they don't sell pigmented lacquer but they do. It's a professional product and the local stores cater to the house painter. Ask for Opex Production Lacquer. This is their line of pigmented lacquer.

  13. #13
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    Sherwin-Williams 40 % off sale ended yesterday. They'll probably have 30% off in the next couple of weeks.

  14. #14
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    Well, that was an enormous fail. Even after thinning the paint with the M-1 additive, it still sprayed like crap. It looked like I was dipping s paint brush in paint and then flicking it at the shelves. It also made a complete mess and was a pain to clean the gun out. Not nearly as bad as the oil paint from before, but still not like cleaning out a clear finish.

    The strange part is, the paint seemed pretty thin when I stirred it and let it run off the paint stick. Very poor results with the Fuji mini mite 4. Looks like im brushing it on.

  15. #15
    I recently sprayed an entry door with Benjamin Moore Aura exterior, my first experience spraying house paint with my HVLP set up, which is a 5 stage Apollo. Using a 2.0 needle/cap with what seemed like sufficient thinning to get a usable viscosity, I got a bunch of spitting and spattering on the first pass. So I thinned some more -- probably to something approaching 15% -- and that worked pretty well in the sense the result was very nice measured by the standard of what you'd expect on an architectural element and it was way faster. That said, my takeaway was that spraying house paint is pushing the limits of HVLP systems optimized for woodworking finishes and, even if it were not, woodworking finishes (like the aforementioned GF milk paint) are much better for woodworking projects, like your shelves.

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