Yes I am an oversensitive cry baby...someone call the waaaaaahmbulance.

 

You Rock Julie

 

OK....I'm a jerk! LOL

Didn't mean to offend, just a little goofy sometimes - too many hours at altitude - you understand. Enough!

Anyway, are you looking for a low flow type of gun, top feed, or a traditional suction high volume/pressure type? Each has it's advantages and disadvantages. Do you have a preference?

I'm not crazy about the "off balance feel" of a top feed gun. I also do not like low pressure guns. I find it really hard to "Ghost coat" evenly with them.

I also bought the Devillbis (sp) gun set and like it (it has the regular gun and th esmall touch up gun).

My dad had an old (like late 40s) DeVilbis gun that is my "Cadillac" gun now. He never let we "peons" use it - he had to do it, -disassembled and cleaned it thoroughly for an hour with an acid brush after each use.

It's a little more "substantial" than my new ones, but so are all of the tools from back then.

 

[quote=Stephen67;8821210]This is the gun I use:
FinishLine HVLP StartingLine Kit and Starter Kit

I bought this same kit and I like the primer gun and the touch up gun. But, I had a hard time dialing in the base-coat/clear-coat gun. But then again, the weather was too warm for my catalyst, so that may have been a great deal of the issue. I'll try again soon on my second vehicle. My 53 will get painted once I figure it all out. So far, I really like this kit.

 

Thanks. Little trouble with tiger stripping on like the roof with the first coat, but when I was up to 3 coats it had all evened out. Kandy (I used a kandy base which is easier to shoot, so i've been told) is a little tricky, the angle of the gun as well as pressure you use and everything else effects things a lot more. everything has to be painted how it sits on the car as well, like the hood needs to flat not vertical, otherwise it looks different when it dries and shines light differently too, noticeably so.

As far as the line goes, just make sure you're using what they recommend all the way to the tank. I had to swap out the connector on my compressor because it was a little too small. 1/4 and 3/8" on these things make a huge difference and it can't be choked anywhere down the line. You can go from a larger to a smaller, just not a smaller to a larger anywhere. You'll need to control the pressure at the gun itself as well, when you get your paint they should have instructions of sort, maybe something you have ot download (I use House of Kolor, they have information on their site), especially with kandies.

Personally I don't think kandies are all that hard, they're harder for sure, but it doesn't take too long to get the hang of them. Course I say this before trying to put down just ONE coat of candy lol. I like deep and vibrancy, nothing bets a candy for that... I'll never paint a normal paint again. The day the paint was dry, I hadn't sanded, re-cleared or sanded and buffed yet.
















It took me 4 years to find the perfect shade that did what I wanted it to do. I plan on going back and adding a rocker panel stripe in white with a silver pearl, and some more of the chrome trim and adding fixing a few minor problems I missed... kandies have to go down on an unbelieveably smooth surface, it's why you see a lot of white cars, white hides problems, dark colors show them. Unless it's the interior and then its the opposite... which of course means I have a white interior...lol

Sigh and how frustrated I am that I never really get her out to drive!! (its a major process with a broken manual garage door and I you won't catch me dead with it on the street in this town, everything I own but her has been hit and run'd on by someone...)

However I strongly emphasizes to anyone reading this, the greatest day you'll have on your build is the day she gets paint. Don't let anyone else do it, nothing beats its. It's a lot of work, actually its a lot of prep-work, and a lot of little things to be aware of, and when you put it all down on one day it can be very nerve racking, but nothing I did on that build beat that feeling I got when I first saw it in blue and went "I did that". Plus if you do the math, you could screw up and have to sand it all off a dozen times till you reached the cost to have someone else paint it, and its not like these trucks have difficult spots to paint or sand... you can't bet it, in fact I don't even think I was as excited to take her for a drive again than I was when I put the paint down, course that could have been cause I just "knew" some one was going to hit me again...


Oh, I did take pictures as I put each layer down, they're kinda interesting. I painted all the jambs and interior and what not first, let that dry, then covered them and assembled. I wanted to do it all at once to get it all to look right the first time, you can do it in pieces but I feared having something like the hood inserts sitting at a slightly wrong angle, or the doors, and having it not match up, I have a picture around here of a '56 F-100 where they painted the hood standing up, it's noticable;
Base (yes you can use a black base with a kandy or a pearl, I don't know why people think you cant...)



First coat, you can kinda notice a little tiger stripping



It was gone by the second


By the third the depth really started to show



Kinda weird looking without the clear giving it the gloss, neat in satin though... but it doesn't have the depth without it. Over 6 different colors with one candy



Sorry, didn't mean to highjack this, I just loved that day.



[quote=carnut122;8823476]You switched tips right? The primer one is bigger if I remember right. It's been about 2 1/2 years since I last painted, so I'm quite rusty. I remember looking up my paint on House of Kolor's technical pdf's, pressure has to be right from how much reaches the gun to how much comes out when you hold the trigger down. I found once that was right where they said for what I was using it flowed like butter. Well... not butter cause that would be horrible in a paint gun. Catalyst could make a big difference too, was it drying to fast?

 

You cant do anything else but love the day after your done spraying and you roll it out into the light for the first time, its almost as good as the day you had your first kid....lol Such a pretty car and I luv that blue too.....

 

I hope painting my truck is not as much a mess as having my kids.

 

Actually, there are three different guns and thus the primer gun flows more paint than the touch-up/door jamb gun( I painted my frame with it and it went well) and the "main" basecoat/clear coat gun. I have no idea what the tip sizes are. I had a lot of trouble with the drop size being too big(not enough atomization) and then it wouldn't flow so I got a lot of orange peel ( I had a medium catalyst and the metal surface was probably at about 100+ degrees). Of course the wrong solution I chose was to apply the paint thicker, so I ended up with runs too. I ended up blocking and buffing the whole truck and it is now OK(not great..just OK). I still have more compounding and color sanding before it'll be great. In the end, I created a lot more work than I would have had to do

 

When you buy paint for a project the data sheet or who ever your getting your paint from should be able to tell you what tip sizes to use. At different viscosity paint will flow differently from the nozzle so the thicker the paint the bigger the tip size. My understanding is most Primers need about an 1.8 and base clear on average are 1.5 and 1.3. I know that the paint I am looking at calls for a 1.8 for the 2k primer and the base is 1.4 tip size. The guns I decided to get come with 4 tips. 2 for each gun.

Just for information here I ended up with Asturo AOM guns. They make a nice starter set that only requires 5cfm @40 PSI. That means most typical garage compressors will run these fine. Once I get them in I will let you know my thoughts on them.

Paint Sprayers Plus - Lowest Prices On Paint Sprayers AOM / Asturo S-356 Twin HVLP Spray Gun Kit

 

Here is a little secret you aren't supposd to know: many body shops nowadays are applying primer with a roller rather than spraying it! The paint manufacturer's are even recommending it. I recently bought some non-cyano epoxy primer from Sherwin Williams that is designed to go on bare metal, no etching primer needed, and has two different hardeners available: one for spraying and the other for squeegie application like a thin surfacer putty. If you are doing body work in phases this is a good product to use to cover the work to protect it, fill pinholes and sanding scratches and you don't have to sand it all off later like the rattle can stuff.

 

I hate it when they use logic, reasoning and big words. On the other subject, I have 2 20 oz gravity feed guns from Harbor Freight. When these guns are clean and properly adjusted they work great. For really special finishes I use my DeVilbis, if you buy one look for stainless steel passages anywhere the paint touches. Urethanes can pick up a black residue which can ''tint'' your paint when used in an all-aluminum gun.