Clear Coating via HVLP

[ChrisA Edwards]

I'm sure this is very easy to answer, for those of you in the know, but I am product dumb at this point.

I'm making a batch of serving trays for Xmas presents for our friends group.

These will be solid Walnut for the sides and a veneered plywood (both sides) for the base.

The flat part of the tray will have some epoxy inlay, so the clear coat needs to be able to bond to that as well as the Walnut.

I have an Apollo Turbine 5 HVLP and would like to use that to spray a polyurethane, or other appropriate material, that can stand up to drips, spills and heat from the bottom of a coffee cup.

I would also like this material to be waterborne for easy clean up, although I do use 3M PPS with my spray gun.

I'm leaning towards GF High Performance Poly/Acrilic Semi Gloss.

Thanks.

[Jebediah Eckert]

Wow, hats off making Christmas gifts in June! This might be the impressive post of the day for me.

I am nobody to give advice on finishing.....but while I am here I have a similar spray setup as you. I have used GF High Performance a bunch on similar use items and as far as I know they have all been fine.

[John TenEyck]

I know you said WB but Arm-R-Seal or Osmo Oil would be easier, look great on walnut, go over epoxy w/o problem, and are very durable. If you want to spray a WB I'd look at GF's Enduro Poly; it has higher durability compared to HP. I'd spray a coat of Sealcoat shellac first, both to warm up the walnut and as a bonding layer to the epoxy.

John

[Jeff Roltgen]

For water-based topcoat, I've searched for years. In terms of durability, currently using Masters Armor by Old Masters, flat sheen. It is a hardwood floor finish, with a catalyst available to add even more durability and hardness to the final coat. Absolute favorite is Aquinity from Diamond Vogel, which is clearer on walnut if your goal is a deep satin sheen, and it also may be catalyzed. The floor poly just has a slight haze to the buildup of coats, so I switch to the Aquinity "lacquer" for satins that rival any solvent based products I've used. Took a loooong time for me to find a WB product that I was happy with. They've really got it straight over the last couple years.
Have shot many many gallons of GF products - no issues, just feel more confident in a hardwood floor specific finish, especially now that results are as good as they are.

jeff

[Scott Bernstein]

I was a total newbie with spray finishing until a couple weeks ago. I just built kitchen cabinets for our house and decided this would be a great opportunity to learn the technique. I have a Fuji 5-stage turbine sprayer and used General Finishes conversion varnish, waterborne, satin. The mixing of the catalyst into the finish adds a little complexity, but after some test runs on plywood (which I will use for shelves later) I more or less got the hang of it pretty quickly. Between the efficiency of spraying, vs brushing, and the rapid dry time of the finish I was able sand and spray all the cabinet boxes in two weekend days. One thing that I found difficult was that is was really to hard to clearly see where the new layers of finish was landing as I was spraying - even in good lighting. The finish is so clear it is hard to tell, even when laying it on plenty thick. I could however tell when I was spraying too thick, or overlapping areas multiple times because you could then see the white color of the finish (before it dries). When it's dry this particular varnish is really crystal clear. If I were doing the exterior of a project I would definitely spray some shellac first to deepen the natural color of the wood a little bit. Next challenge will be to apply acrylic paint to the doors - we shall see how that goes.