Jack Boedigheimer says:
>
> Just used one (Accuspray $129) for the primer on my truck. It is in
> pieces and just got sandblasted so I was
> shooting epoxy primer inside and out and everywhere. The gun did a very
> nice job and there was a lot
> less overspray. Working in the garage I could actually see what I was
> doing with normal lighting. A guy had
> to really try hard to get a run but maybe that was just the material. I
> would advocate the HVLP guns but as
> with any gun don't buy the cheap cheap ones or you will be sorry. Having
> spent most of my time on the $40 specials, this one was an amazing
> difference.
Hear hear. I have 4 guns, a $40 special that I use for latex and stains
when doing furniture, it was my first gun that I bought for primer only.
It sucks for finish, but wood generally isn't going for gloss, so that's
what it's relegated to now. The next one is a small over head cup
Devilbiss gun, nice blue annodizing, rubber knurled knobs for adjusting,
only holds 8 oz of paint but does a really nice job for quick projects or
final touch up, it was $200 and you can tell by using it. Then I have my
two big guns, a standard style with a remote 2 quart reservoir that is
great for the large jobs like primering an entire car. It holds a lot of
paint and you don't get fatigue from carrying it all on your hand. I think
the light weight of the mechanism is worth the added hassle at clean up.
Again this was $130 and I've spent another $50-75 on various tips and an
extension hose for the paint "bucket". The last gun is an HVLP converter,
I run it with my standard compressor but the psi is dialed back to 25, my
compressor is large enough that it isn't an issue (7.5hp dual stage affair)
but it could be with a standard 90 psi 5hp model. This gun was $90 on
sale at the local Napa, regularly $180--a demo model but likely unused when
I got it. It does a fabulous job, you would almost have to be a mannequin
to screw up a job with this, once the spray is adjusted. Also it uses
about 70% of the paint to cover the same area.
I've used one of the heated air turbine guns, very nice, did a great job
but they run $450-600 for the setup.
Consider that paint costs $60-$100 a gallon for the good stuff, and you can
see that spending $200 on a good gun to avoid paint wastage is an easy
payoff.
My crappy gun can easily be misadjusted and dump the entire quart of paint
onto something in a matter minutes. Most of the paint is lost to mist in
this case. Many of the cheap guns have this problem.
If you are going to go the route of do-it-yourself to save money, save
yourself some frustration as well, and buy the best gun you can afford.
The next time I paint, I am going to get a reservoir converter for my tiny
gun, the converter is $60 and is only a pint, but its better than the cup,
and the finish when using that gun is really nice. I can tell the
difference, or rather my fingers can when it comes time to finish sanding.
A last point, once you put primer in a gun, it never seems to spray top
coats as cleanly, that's one of the reasons I keep my guns separate, the
bucket dipper is my primer gun, and the hvlp is my finish coater. The
fancy standard gun does a better job of smooth application though given my
skills.
Probably more than you wanted to know, but I spent 3 years in my youth
working at a very high dollar body shop (1930's mercedes benz and rolls
royces mostly) and learned from my experiences there. The first year I
worked there, I couldn't even touch a car once it had primer on it, and I
was just a sanding monkey. By the third year I was doing color sanding and
minor touch up. It would have been another decade I think before Hans and
Gunther would have let me spray final coats, Hans would let me know how
"lucky" I was to be allow to spray primer, often.
--
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Miq Millman miq@teleport.com
Tualatin, OR
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