At 7 Am this morning if anyone would have told me it would take until 6 PM to wipe down and spray only 2 quarts of paint on 13 pieces of steel already hanging I would have told them they were out of their ever loving minds. I'm glad I wasn't the one doing the painting. First thing this morning my partner shows up without goggles to cover his glasses. It wasn't like he hadn't known for months that he was the one doing the painting. OH none of the hardware stores were open past noon on Saturday so he went to Wally world nothing that would fit over his glasses Big Suprise there I had recently bought a bunch of stuff at an auction and there was a new pair of Victor welding goggles still in the package so I said you can probably make these work. He was going to wear one of those silly covid masks Not an N95. I said Dude you have been selling this paint for more than 10 years, and you are going to trust your lungs to one of those things? This isn't Latex house paint, you know yourself that if you can smell it, it is going into your lungs. I had been blasting for the past 4 days using Black Diamond coal slag as the media. Last night since I was finished blasting I removed the filters and washed my 3M half face respirator in hot soapy water, so it would be clean for the next time I need it.
Here use my respirator and handed him a package of new filters. That reminds me, I only have 1 package of filters left so I need to order some spares.
Since I didn't use sand to blast with the cola slag didn't leave hardly ant dust just put a water/oil filter on the hose and blew the pieces off to remove any thing that might not have already fallen off. 10 minutes and done, cool I thought.
Then he said the spray gun needs a 1.6mm nozzle for this paint to flow. That's funny you painted your trailer with the same type paint just a different color the 1.2 mm nozzle in it seemed to work just fine I painted the trailer neck with it and the nozzle was fine I just thinned the paint by 10% . You shouldn't thin this paint, The factory told me I could thin it by 10% with xylene or xylol or
#1 thinner if I needed to so thin it I don't have a HF gun.
This is taking forever, I'm never going to be able to finish all of the parts in time for the 2nd coat then have to wait for that to cure enough to put the top coat on.
Then turn your pressure up and narrow the fan width to 4 inches. Your supposed to use only 30 to 35 PSI. I won't tell if you don't, crank it up to 50 and see how that works. On and on, and on this went throughout the day. Until he got to the topcoat, which is a brand new formulation of paint that has only been on the market a couple of years in limited colors. I've had great success with it but then again I am a bit loopy when it comes to following directions. When it is cold I might add a tiny bit too much activator, when it is hot I might add less than what is called for. And Low and behold the top coat was supposed to have the smaller nozzle. He had the qt of paint in stock for longer than its sell by date so 90% of the pigment had coagulated in the bottom of the can leaving only about an inch of the resin on top. So here he was trying dislodge the nearly hardened lump with a stupid tongue depressor, which would be fine for stirring in the activator. I mentioned using a drill and a stirer, OH no it just make a mess and splash everywhere, so after about 20 minutes of fighting the lump he said go for it . I stirred slowly for a while until the lump became smaller and smaller then he said maybe you can speed up some. Man I can homogenize this stuff if you want I said.
the long and short of it about 5 minutes later he was painting again and less than an hour later he was done. He made me tired just watching him.
Putting on the yellow base coat
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Borrowing a phrase from MR Ford you can have it any color you want as long as it is black
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