Thread: Spraying Lacquer

I am a beginning lacquer sprayer, having not sprayed since high school shop class. I read Richard's story about turning up the air and the liquid, and gave it a try last night, on my project, the body for an electric guitar. It was great! Come to find out, I was using so little air and so little liquid, I must have been dispensing only single atoms of lacquer. The old way would have taken me years to build up good coats. Thanks!

Pops and others
Quality of the spray is important when using lacquer, most finishers use hp guns (high presure) runing about 60 psi, this allows you to move quickly and achive top quality results. To give you an idea the gun I will not give you mutch change from $600, so buy the best gun you can afford

Well, this thread has been going for quite a while but keeps getting resurected, and as I have gathered so much information from it (some conflicting) that as I have just completed spraying my second piece of furniture (2nd spray ever) I would give my conclusions.

I am using Protec NC Lacquer.

Try 1. (settings as first spray job)
a. Thinned 25%
b. Pressure at Compressor 60psi
c. Pressure at gun 20psi
d. Material flow open till a flow was achieved.
e. Fan was about 1/2 openned
d. Moving the gun at a medium/slow pace
The above produced barely adequate results, uneven coverage and orange peel.

I then went to the notes that I made after reading this forum.

Try 2. (settings gathered from forum)
a. Thinned 35%
b. Pressure at Compressor 70psi
c. Pressure at gun 50psi
d. Material flow openned wide up.
e. Fan was about fully opened
d. Moving the gun at a fast pace
The above produced very patchy results with the fan being split into 2 separate circles with a gap in the middle.

Try 3. (modified from above after experimentation on scrap)
a. Thinned 50%
b. Pressure at Compressor 100psi
c. Pressure at gun 30psi
d. Material flow openned till flow achieved and then 1/2 turn more.
e. Fan was fully opened then closed 1 turn
d. Moving the gun at a medium fast/fast pace
The above produced the best results I have ever had to date. I am not saying it was perfect, just the best for me.

A wet even coat was applied to both horizontal & vertical surfaces and the only runs experienced was on vertical end grain. A quick wipe of the finger over the run and the next coat blended it in.

The above settings/application method was achieved by combining bits from a lot of posts in this thread, so thank you to all those who have contributed as without your input I would still be sitting here looking at the spray gun wondering what to adjust next, your input at least gave me the knowledge to have a go.

Gday guys.

I know many automotive spray painters.

2 of my best friends are spraypainters.

So, after reading all of the posts in this thread I decided to get both of them around and help me with my spraypainting. (I'm not too bad at it)

Anyway Russell (My first mate) had the style of really bombing on material. We sprayed paint and poly. He said that the poly was virtually like automotive 2 pack paint. Wide open material and air. He was pretty picky about how his fan was. Moved quite quick and very skillfully over the piece. Excellent finish. Made my work look ordinary.

Then the next day Adrian came around. He sprayed with the air pressure slightly lower with the material nearly wide open too. He set his fan after he had his material and air setting right. (Just as Russell did too) Moved accross the piece quite quick too. Looked great.

Both guys said to me that if you thin the material down too much you have more chance of getting runs. Yet they both really bombed the stuff on.

Both guys were spraying cupboards with a backing board attached. But they both said it would be easier if the backing board was not there. Didnt look that way to me the way they were spraying!!

Gentlemen,

I use a simple technique but it works for me to ensure the spray is evenly applied. It came about by spraying a coca cola red onto a car some years ago. Firstly, the mix ratio was about 10:6:1 (pant:thinners:harner) When spraying, I noticed that where the paint is applied, it is wet and therefore shines. This was particularly noticeable because of the red colour. So one could easily see where you have already applied enough, therefore avoiding spraying over the shining wet areas as this would cause paint to run. At the same token, the dull areas had too little paint and one would apply more paint there until it ebvenly shines and merges with the rest of the paint. When the car was finished, it looked like a pro's job, and I took pride in my first spray job. The next time I sprayed a car, the colour was white, and guess what, it's most probably the most difficult of all colours to spray because the glare from the white paint tends to blind you somewhat, That's when I developded my technique.

The techniques is to hold a lead light in one hand and spray gun in the other and use the light to reflect off the wet paint to see where is enough and where too little. But all the time you must act fairly quickly as to avoid paint sections to dry while you're still busy spraying.