Painting the frame

[athawk11]

Hey Kurtis.

I think George and I made similar paint booths. �Great minds think alike. �

I didn't build my paint booth until I was going to paint the tub and other sheet metal. �I shot the frame in my garage with the doors open and the floor watered down. I suspended the frame on wires hanging from the rafters.
 

 ï¿½When I did build the booth, I made �it with about 2 feet of walking space around a Willys tub. �I wish I would have made it bigger, as I had to be very careful to not hit the tub with the compressor hose. I suspended 2x4s off the rafters with some hanger angle. �I stapled �a piece of 2mil plastic over the top of the 2x4 frame. �I then stapled the side sheets to the 2x4 frame. �I bought some cheap furnace air filters and taped them to the back plastic wall and front wall. �Then I taped the filters to a couple cheap house fans I had around. �(Square box fans would be so much easier) �I took some more 2x4s and rolled the plastic around them at the floor. �I needed to weigh them down with some bags of sand. �I air pressure in the booth kept sucking the plastic sheets inward.



I thought I would need the small gun with the 1.2 tip to shoot small parts. I used it once, but then got more confident with the larger gun and didn't use it again. �I shot the primers with the 1.8 tip. Again, as George also mentioned, just dial back the paint flow so you don't shoot too much primer. �At least until your confidence builds up.

I used the 1.4 tip to shoot the topcoat. �Note, though, that all paint is different. � �Do what George suggests and shoot at some scrap cardboard until you get the flow and fan size you are happy with.

Bottom line, give it a shot. �You never know what you capable of until you try. � You may be the next great auto painter in the classic car restoration world.

Tim

[athawk11]

Sorry,
I forgot to mention that I did buy an air regulator and mounted it to the gun.  It helped control how much air was flowing through the gun.  On the HF gun, I set the air pressure at about 35lbs.  When I pulled the trigger, it would drop to about 22-23lbs.  This was where I felt the gun performed the best for my style of painting.

One other thing, clean the gun thoroughly with lacquer thinner or any reducer you have around.  It's pretty easy to do, but take it apart and clean...clean...clean.  Dried up paint inside the gun will reduce the quality of your paint job and in many cases, make the gun useless.

Tim

[Tumbleweed]

Dang Tim,

You really did a nice job on the booth. Ditto on all the good info on the booth size.

George

[mrman5917]

Thanks for the encouragement guys, I'm going to see what I can do about putting one up in my garage. I like the idea of not building a frame outside (it gets REALLY windy and dusty around here). I should be able to move my car out and get about 2 cars worth of space to work with. Now I've just gotta finish cleaning up the frame and then buy some paint and guns.

I'm thinking now that I'll go with 1 qt of Mastercoat Silver and a quart of Mastercoat Tractorkote. I'll talk to my father in law next weekend to see about borrowing a gun, otherwise I'll stop at HF and pick up the duo. For something I hadn't even considered doing myself before, now I can't wait to do it.