Thread: How to spray paint into tight spaces

I'm in the process of finishing some room-dividing screens that I've just made. They have been made with 42x19 clear pine - and the design has a lot of repeating patterns of two or three crosspieces 19mm apart, as you can see in the attached photo. I'm wanting to apply a spirit stain first, then either lacquer or varnish. My problem is getting an even coverage of stain in the recesses between the crosspieces. There are 5 screens so its not a small job.

I tried using a brush but it was time-consuming and the results were awful. The problem is basically that with the gaps being only 19mm wide you are basically painting on the sides of the brush - never a good thing to do.

I tried a tiny roller which was better but it doesn't get into the corners.

I am now trying various methods of applying by spray (fortunately I have a few spare pieces to work on) and the results are slowly getting better. Where I'm at now is using a touch-up gun, pressure and product turned right down, tight pattern, and gently spraying the recesses. Then I swap to a larger gun to spray all the rest.

The main problem is that I always deposit a LOT more stain on the outside faces of the recess then I do in the recess.

As I said, results are not bad, but I'm wondering if anyone has any tips or ideas that might make it easier. Am I missing some well-known trade secret ?

cheers
Arron

ps. and in case you are wondering, I didn't pre-finish them because we thought we would be happy with the look of pine, but now we have repainted the rest of our house we realise they need to be a dark brown.

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