Help on mixing lacquer to prevent overspray and orangepeel! - created 04-05-2007

Fackler, Dustin - 04/05/2007.20:24:47
Guest User

I mixed up some white pigment into some Behlen's Nitro (mixed it pretty weak; I just mixed it up and let it sit for a half hour or so. Did I do that right?). It came out to almost 3.5 ounces on the Preval jar. I added almost 1 ounce of lacquer thinner per the instructions on the Preval box. I sprayed on a box and everything looked fine. Then I started spraying the body. I was spraying for about a second when I noticed that it was coming out wierd.

I then sprayed the box again and noticed that it came out in thousands of little droplets instead of a real super-fine mist. Spraying further just caused the orange peel effect on the box. It was about 45 degrees outside when I sprayed too, BTW. Luckily there's not much color on it at all. 30-60 seconds of sanding should be enough to sand all of the color off.

What can I do to get it to spray right and prevent orange peel? I saw a post by 71818 (I think) and got a few suggestions:

1) It was too cold outside and the lacquer was drying before it hit the body/box

2) I got regular 'ol lacquer thinner from a hardware store, so I'm not sure if I got cheap lacquer thinner and that's causing/contributing to the problem or if the lacquer thinner I got is just fine. How can I tell if its cheap lacquer thinner that's causing the problem?

3) Not enough thinner

Any recommendations? Do I need to go to Woodcraft and get some Behlen's Lacquer thinner? Do I need to add more thinner? Do I need to do both?

I'm going to wait until it warms up regardless.

Behlens is my old brand, and it was certainly prone to orange peel in cold temperatures. I sprayed outside too, and never below 60 degrees or the orange peel got very bad. Can't tell you anything about how color might affect things.

I just checked the temperature on the Weather Channel and its 36 freaking degrees! I didn't realize it was that cold when I was spraying!

I'm thinking that's the main problem. It's forecasted to be back up to 60 by Tuesday. I'll give it another go then.

Thanks for the heads up on Behlen's!

Preval sprayers don't do a very good job at all. I've found them to be much too coarse of a spray to do anythng usefull. You're better off investing in a cheap airbrush kit that comes with its own propellant can. The sooner you stop using that preval the better your finishes will improve overnight!

What are some cheap airbrush kits that can do a good job?

If you're going to be spraying guitars and other things, it's worth it to buy an inexpensive small spray gun and an air compressor. The cheap guns work quite well, actually.

If you need to use an air brush or some other thing that requires a can of propellant, you can save yourself a lot of money if you use a spare tire for your air. Use a big tire, and you'll find it lasts a long time. It's a lot cheaper than buying those cans!

Not to put a slice in your bungee cord, but, if you expect to spray without orange peel, anything cheap won't provide any forward progress when it comes to spraying - unless you find a deal on eBay.

However, if you're going cheap, Mark has the best suggestions. Airbrushes are for artwork (or sunbursts) - tried to do an Ukulele with one (Paasche VL actually), not big enough.

I could never fathom spending over a bill on a spray gun (especially a jamb gun), when so many gravity feed (full size) HVLP's are available for under that. Suffice to say, spending 3X as much on a good gun reduces sanding time (from orange peel) faster than you can say "I'm going to spray in the proper conditions."

Again, the cheap guns actually do a good job - be aware, HVLP's are air hungry, so you may want to consider conventional.