Poor man's finishing "room"

[Rob Diz]

So the project related tool budget is pretty much shot - as usual. My eyes are always larger than my financial stomach. It's been fun, but the well is pretty much dry. The last of the money will soon be spent on a PC PSH1 gun, an extra tip and a few misc. spray dodads. What's left will have to go towards materials.

The wife is ready for me to start producing something . . .

I'm planning on making my kitchen cabinets. I have the layout, cut lists, etc pretty much planned out (for now that is). I am planningn on spraying a water borne poly on the inside of the cabinets, and a water borne paint (Fuhr or Target) on the exterior bits and pieces.

My thought was that I would clean out much of the garage (including the cars) cover what's left with drop cloths and clean paper, and have a box fan near the open door and a window open to get some cross ventilation.

I will be wearing a mask with an organic filter.

I was wondering if I needed to make a spray booth out of cardboard and merv 8 or so filter and a box fan, something more permanent, or if I could simply spray in the garage as I have described. I have not yet used the PC PSH1, and dont' know how much overspray I will have to deal with. I don't want to spend a few minutes with the spray gun and end up with a fine mist over everything in the garage.

Any ideas or examples of the results you have gotten with your methods would be appreciated.

I don't have the space or the money for a dedicated finishing room, so we will have to find another way to get this to work.

[Ben Grunow]

I am curious about this as well (kitchen in my future too). I would think that the biggest concerns would be what's overhead and what gets blown into the garage by the cross ventilation. Maybe a window screen or at least some HVAC filter in the window would be enough. The overhead area in my garage is open joists (no drywall or floor plywood) so youcan see the roof ply above. I have to believe that there is a ton of dust falling when the electric GDO operates so I plan on a plastic cieling made out of those cheap/thin drop cloths.

Is powered ventilation actually required for this type of work (with the finishes mentioned)/

Hopefully I have not hijacked your post here but I thought you might be helped by my questions as well. Please update with your progress if possible as I am sure that I will learn form your experiences (read "I'm glad your going first")

Maybe someone who has sprayed some finishes can enlighten us?

[Rob Diz]

hijack away. I had not thought about the dust coming off of the ceiling.

It's always something.

[Don Baer]

Did ya ever think about using wipe on poly ?

I know ya bought a gun but you are pointing to some of the reason why I use wipe on as my finish of choice.

[Jim Becker]

When I sprayed my kitchen cabinets, I didn't bother with any kind of "booth"...but I shoot only water borne finish and didn't see a need for it. My color coats were Target Coatings and Fuhr and my clear coat on the interiors and to normalize the sheen on the color coats was Target Coatings USL. Any "over-spray" was dry before it hit the floor. I did have my air filtration unit turned on to help clear suspended particles and also wore a face mask to avoid breathing in the particulates. But these finishes are low- to no-VOC and don't pose any risk for fire and/or explosion, nor do they pose a health risk as long as you protect your eyes and lungs from direct exposure.

Dust off the ceiling shouldn't really be an issue unless there is something or someone actively causing it to fall at exactly the same point your are spraying. Unlike oil-based finishes, the water borne stuff is dry to the touch in just a few minutes. There is substantially less risk of issues than with wipe-on varnish, IMHO and experience...

[Allen Bookout]

If you do decide that you need some sort of booth here is an interesting thread. Look at his booth in the finishing room photo. Then for information look on down at response #10. I am going to try something like this until I see how much overspray that I am going to have with a HVLP setup. I am glad to see that Jim does not have any problem without a booth so hopefully that might work without the pain of having to set up something everytime.

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=40466

[Jamie Buxton]

In my experience, you don't need a booth when spraying waterbornes with an HVLP. My experience is with an Accuspray HVLP, so maybe it doesn't apply to your conversion gun, but I bet it does.

I spray waterbornes with an HVLP turbine right in my wood shop. I clean up beforehand so there will be less dust blowing around. I put a sheet of plastic on the floor under whatever I'm shooting. If the plastic extends 5 feet beyond where I'm spraying, there's no wet finish which gets beyond it. Most of the finish goes on the furniture. What little overspray there is dries to dust before it gets 5 feet away.

As for bugs and stuff falling on the wet finish, it isn't anywhere as big a problem as with a brush-applied finish. Finishes designed for spraying are dry to touch in a few minutes.

I crack the doors so I get ventilation. I wear a good respirator.

[Steve Elias]

My "spray booth" consists of the following: an EZ-UP portable canopy set up on a cloth painter's tarp in the driveway. The outdoor environment provides plenty of ventilation and the cloth tarp underneath doesn't get slippery like plastic can when its covered with dry overspray. The EZ-UP keeps the pieces (and me) out of direct sunlight and protects the pieces from falling debris (I have a big tree shading the driveway). An advantage of this setup is that I now have an EZ-UP to use for other purposes as well. Also, I can easily hang a couple of inexpensive tarps around the sides of the canopy to create an enclosed room if needed. I don't like to spray in my workshop because it is a)small and crowded, and b) the dry overspray creates a fine dust that covers everything in a radius that depends, I suppose, on your technique and the amount of pressure you're pushing through the gun.

As others have pointed out, you don't need much of anything other than a good respirator to spray most water based finishes.

Steve

[Rob Diz]

Thanks for the information. As a new convert to HVLP, I didn't know how quickly the stuff dries. Boy, it really sounds like I will be able to put 2 or 3 coats of WB poly on in an afternoon.

To answer the question on wipe on poly - Since I will be spraying the exteriors with some type of pain, I thought I should practice a bit on the interiors. Only I will see the screw ups on the interior finish, the exterior will be seen by a few more people.

I read Charron's spary finishing book. He starts off talking about the first time he sprayed and ended up with a garage full of mist that covered everything. It was that introduction that got me thinking that I would need a spray booth. He must have been using a conventional spray gun with an oil based product.

[John Hemenway]

What Mr. Becker said it the truth!
Cover what you don't want to dust off later, but WB dries really fast and dust, bugs, etc. aren't much of a problem (unless a swarm of 6 leggers are attracted to you ). I cover what's directly behind the spray zone and the TS, but that's about it.

[Jamie Buxton]

Since I will be spraying the exteriors with some type of pain, I thought I should practice a bit on the interiors.

Maybe somebody else has better guidance to offer, but I've never been happy with HVLP spraying interiors. The gun throws lots of air, and it blows back into my face. Worse, the bottom of the space gets a rough finish. I think that the globules of finish which dry in the air fall on top of the wet finish. At any rate, the cure I've found is to not competely assemble the box. Leave the back off, spray the interior, and then add the back. Or another cure is to spray all the panels before you assemble them into a box. That's pretty much become my standard method for drawers. I cut everything to size, varnish them, then cut the joinery, and then assemble them.

[Rob Diz]

Thanks for making the point. I was actually going to spray the "interior" side of the cabinets right after they were dimensioned to size from the sheets and before I did anything else. I was going to spray them before I routed out anything for fixed shelves, or even before cutting the rabbets I was going to use for the box construction. In essence, I will be painting small parts of the sheet.

In theory, I could also paint the lips and exterior portions as well before construction, but I think it would be nice to have paint on the joints, so I will probably paint after the box is constructed.

[JayStPeter]

I sprayed some dark blue target lacquer. I agree that most of the mess is just dust. It got spread all over my shop from my temporary booth. I actually had to mop the shop floor to get it up so I wasn't tracking it all over the house.
I would do something to block the overspray in the direction you are spraying. The plastic covering my floor moved during the process and part of my floor is now blue. I didn't completely cover the window trim where my fan is either and it is now tinted blue. The plastic walls I used were covered with blue paint. It wasn't entirely sticking to the plastic and was making a huge mess as I was trying to roll it up for reuse, so I wound up throwing it away. It was peeling off in sheets that then turned into the blue powder and coverend everything that touched it (mostly me).

Jay

[Chris Padilla]

Maybe somebody else has better guidance to offer, but I've never been happy with HVLP spraying interiors. The gun throws lots of air, and it blows back into my face. Worse, the bottom of the space gets a rough finish. I think that the globules of finish which dry in the air fall on top of the wet finish. At any rate, the cure I've found is to not competely assemble the box. Leave the back off, spray the interior, and then add the back. Or another cure is to spray all the panels before you assemble them into a box. That's pretty much become my standard method for drawers. I cut everything to size, varnish them, then cut the joinery, and then assemble them.

Ah, yes, a potential disadvantage of bleeder-type hvlp spray guns...same as my Apollo 1000...gotta be careful where I point that sucker or it'll stir up a mess!

[Jim Becker]

Don't you mean "siphon" type, Chris? None of my HVLP guns is a "bleeder"...AFAIK, that refers to the type that literally "bleeds" air the whole time it's hooked up to the compressor. (I have an old, cheapo gun like that)