Best laid plans…

The day I picked for painting the primer on the end cap finally came and it was a perfect day for painting. Eighty degree for a high, overnight lows above 65 degrees and wind less than 8 mph. My plans were coming to fruition!

Before the morning chill was over I went outside to wash the area to be primed with dawn dish soap. After about an hour I went backout to mask off the area to be painted with plastic. Then I did the final cleaning with Sprayway glass cleaner and SPI 700-1 Waterborne Wax and Grease Remover.

The Waterborne Wax and Grease Remover.has to sit 45-60 minutes before applying the epoxy to allow the solvents in the cleaner to dissipate. While the Wax and Grease Remover was drying I mixed epoxy primer with its activator because it must be induced (allow to rest after mixing) at least 30 minutes covered.

It was nearing noon by this time so I let the epoxy continue to induce and broke for lunch. I wanted to be fresh for my first attempt at painting. The day before I had bought some water based paint that was on the discount shelf at Lowe’s to practice with. This allowed me to work not only on my technique but to get comfortable with the paint gun and it settings for air and fluid.

After lunch I donned my goggles and Respirator (charcoal), paint suit and latex gloves. Then I stirred the epoxy once again before spraying, poured the epoxy into the paint gun’s cup using a filter, fired up the compressors and got ready to paint.

I mentioned compressors because I had to use two borrowed 20 gallon compressors to do this job because a 50 gallon compressor wasn’t available for rent anywhere in town. So I used a splitter to join the two compressors together to give me 40 gallons of air supply.

Once the compressors stopped filling their combined tanks I was ready to paint. I used some scaffolding I bought (cheaper than renting and to be sold later) and three borrowed ladders to get up, down and across the endcap so I could maintain a “wet edge” on the paint.

When painting it is important to maintain a “wet edge” of paint for it to have a professional look. I had my Eastwood Concours spray gun with a 1.3 tip set at 28 psi and started spraying about 5 inches away from the surface. I sprayed a initial light to medium coat for the first coat.

Everything went pretty smooth as I was able to maintain a wet edge for the most part and getting up and down the ladders and scaffolding wasn’t as challenging as I feared.I was pleased with my first coat.

After 40 minutes of ”flash time” (time allowed to drive and for solvents to dissipate) I got the paint gun loaded for the second coat of primer.I had planned to put three coats on this day but towards the end of the second coat the gun started sputtering paint which resulted in paint drips all over the endcap. Crap! Now I will need to research how to handle this setback…