Learning to spray paint

Stealth Pilot wrote:
On Tue, 21 Aug 2007 02:50:58 +0000, Ernest Christley
wrote:


Morgans wrote:

"cavelamb himself" wrote


I second the HVLP approach.
Mine is a $90 Harbor Freight cheapie that I've used for the last 8 years.

It makes very little overspray, and works fine.

I should add that there is not enough tea in China to make me spray a
fuselage with an airbrush, when I could fill the quart HVLP gun one time, or
perhaps two, and do it all. The waste factor difference would be very
small, indeed.


I second the cheapy HF HVLP sprayer. The suck at spraying regular
paint, but the watery aircraft paints are a perfect match for it. It
puts down PolyTone in a perfect layer.

I used a $6 airbrush from Northern Tool to spray a lot of the tube on my
project. It clogged up beyond repair about halfway through the
fuselage. It was actually beneficial that it was so small, because I
couldn't have gotten a touchup gun into all that small spaces between
tubes. I ended up doing a large section with a 3" roller. That worked
really well for everything except the tight corners. If I had to do it
over again, I'd roll as much as I could and hit the corners with the
modeler's airbrush.


you tried to get by with just one???? :-) :-)

buy a dozen of them :-)
expect them to gum up and replace them.

I must throw out the 5 gummed up ones I still have in the workshop.
Stealth Pilot

I painted the garage walls when we moved in here.
Nothing fancy - just a coat of water based Kilz.

The Wagner Power Painter was my first choice, but even thinned 50:50
(way too thin for this stuff) the WPP would gum up in less than a
minute. It was a prolem withthe pump piston - not the spray head.

I gave up and tried the HVLP. Thinned about 10% he Kilz went on
beautifully. No overspray at all hardly/

Go figure.

The whole 2 car garage tool an hour to paint.

Along the door frames a simple cardboard mask made nice sharp edges.

HVLP - it ain't yer grandpa's spray painter...

cavelamb himself wrote:

The Wagner Power Painter was my first choice, but even thinned 50:50
(way too thin for this stuff) the WPP would gum up in less than a
minute. It was a prolem withthe pump piston - not the spray head.

I have similar annoying experience with the Wagner PowerPainter.

The power roller on the other hand works really well with even
thick paints, but I'm not sure I'd consider painting a plane with
it.

When it comes to PolyFiber, read those instructions VERY VERY
carefully. The first few coats are required to be brushed on
to get the mechanical penetration of the fabric weave.

On Wed, 22 Aug 2007 07:45:48 -0400, Ron Natalie
wrote:

cavelamb himself wrote:

The Wagner Power Painter was my first choice, but even thinned 50:50
(way too thin for this stuff) the WPP would gum up in less than a
minute. It was a prolem withthe pump piston - not the spray head.

I have similar annoying experience with the Wagner PowerPainter.

The power roller on the other hand works really well with even
thick paints, but I'm not sure I'd consider painting a plane with
it.

When it comes to PolyFiber, read those instructions VERY VERY
carefully. The first few coats are required to be brushed on
to get the mechanical penetration of the fabric weave.



the OP was talking about spraying the fuselage tubes.