How 'bout the "Critter"?

[Bill White]

Keep gettin' the smaller jobs that would benifit from a spray finish, but the time to clean up my REAL gun often makes my brush.
What are your thoughts on the gun if you have one?
Bill

[steve tompkins]

hey bill,
i've had a critter for years. over all its good with few draw backs. depending on how small a project your talking about, it throughs a small pattern. 3" *+/-
it tends to spit if not well thinned. clean up takes about 2 min. over all i'de give it a thumbs up.
my 2cents

[Joe Chritz]

Top cup gravity feed. Takes 2 minutes top to clean, less if using waterbased.

Unless you have to turn the gun a lot there aren't a lot of disadvantages for small projects since the limited capacity wouldn't be an issue. Plus almost no waste of material.

I have a couple top cups and like them a lot.

Joe

ETA: I'm not familiar with the critter but a top cup would require a compressor. I run mine off a 5HP (yeah right) 20 gallon, it struggles to keep up but small jobs are no problem.

[Curt Harms]

Keep gettin' the smaller jobs that would benifit from a spray finish, but the time to clean up my REAL gun often makes my brush.
What are your thoughts on the gun if you have one?
Bill

It'll work with a SMALL compressor, I used it with a lashed-up "tire inflator", pressure switch & 3 gallon tank(Wanna talk about noisy?). Specs call for a 3/4 h.p. compressor. More overspray than HVLP setups and will spray most anything that can be thinned to reasonable consistency. Overspray can be minimized by using just enough air pressure to get good atomization and no more. Thicker materials need more air pressure, thinner materials less. Cleanup is super simple and it uses small glass jars for material storage. Keep material in one jar and cleaning solvent in another. Attach one jar, spray, attach another jar, spray some solvent, done. One trick if storing finish in a jelly jar-put teflon tape around the threads, that way the ring won't stick to the jar. Anyone who's had a jar full of paint break while trying to remove the ring, raise your hand I remove the spray tip and blow out the feed tube (not attached to the jar!) with compressed air. If the spray tip gets gunked up, clean it out with a small drill bit, about 1/16th or so. Not a recommended technique with HiBuck HVLP guns. It's no Binks or Accuspray gun but it has its place and I don't mind spraying small areas thanks to easy cleanup.

As Joe said, gravity feed guns aren't too bad to clean up and they do a better job than the Critter but they take longer to clean up than the Critter and use more air. If You have the compressor, Harbor Freight's purple HVLP guns get pretty good reviews for what they cost.

HTH

Curt