The kind of day I like for spraying

[Tom King]

 

[Tom King]

If I sprayed every day, the 310 would be fine for coverage in one pass, but since I spray so rarely, I feel like the 308 is more forgiving, and don't mind having to go over a spot more than once.

7mph wind on the lake was probably 8 to 9 where I was spraying, so I had to stay closer than 12" or the wind would play with the fan.  The smaller tip was better for closer anyway.  I like days with a light breeze so I don't have to wear a respirator.

We put three coats on.  That will cure for a week, be sanded with 220, and then 4 or 5 coats of Halcyon.  The garage door sections will just lay in the back of the garage for that week to cure.

A gauge on an airless rig is well worth it.  Once a setup is found that works, you can go right to it next time, and get right to work.

[Coop]

Tom, unless I missed it in the video, what are first three coats of? I will lookup the Halcyon.

[wtnhighlander]

Very interesting. Forgive my ignorance of the spraying process, but what do the psi numbers refer to? It can't isn't source air pressure, can it? Unless you are spraying with a scuba tank...

[Coop]

Maybe you should tell about the Hayclon also as when I looked it up, it had nothing to do with finishes. 

[Tom King]

EM8000cv   conversion varnish.    Airless.  psi the pump is pushing the finish with.  Straight out of the can, no thinning.  No air.

More tomorrow.  Totalboat Halcyon.

[Tom King]

My reasoning for using the conversion varnish was for when the next time comes for them to be refinished.  There are many more durable finishes, but the trouble with maximum durability is maximum difficulty in removing remnants when the time comes. 

I was hoping the Target coatings conversion varnish was like the old solvent based CV's that we know.  No one could really tell me, but after testing the first batch that came, it sands as easily, and powders up as nicely as old conversion varnishes.  If one didn't know, you may not be able to tell any difference in the cured product.

What was on these doors to start with was covered by some probably high end polyurethane marine varnish.  It was a real pain to get off.  It did not powder up nicely when sanded.  I did not want to have to redo that job any time in the future.  The design of the doors in no way took redoing them into consideration.  The molding profile inside the stiles and rails is an Ovolo, which there is nothing quick about stripping.  Also, the tapered parts of the raised panels are curved, rather than flat.  I have 12 to 14 hours in stripping, and prepping these doors.  They looked like they had never been stripped before.   

The Totalboat Halcyon will be built up in multiple coats.  It has a UV protector in it.  Hopefully, these will last some number of years, and when the time comes to redo them again, it shouldn't be anything like as much work as it was this time, or I may just decide to make some complete new doors designed to be easier to strip.

It would be much easier to just put up doors that don't require such maintenance, but it's such a dull looking house anyway, that varnished doors have to make it more attractive.   Picture of the doors in place show a couple of panels I test sanded before taking them down.  It only takes about ten minutes to take a garage door down, or to put it back up.  I just wanted to see how hard it was to sand them.  

The picture of the section is after I had already started stripping the Ovolo, and those stupid grooves.  Just those parts took longer than all the rest of the surface.

 

[Mark J]

11 hours ago, Tom King said:

but it's such a dull looking house anyway,

Well there's a name for it, only you wanna spell it with an "h".  The Duhl House.  

[Tom King]

It sat there unsold for three years after the owners passed.  No one would buy it because it was considered a tear down. It came cheap when I made an offer. I make something out of nothing for a living, so I hope this is going to be worth it.

It does have some redeeming characteristics, especially since it overlooks our point, and adjoins our land.  The end of the cove, and beach came with it, but not really enough deep water for a dock.  Adjoining our point, I can add another boat slip on a dock because of the way the lake rules are.   It has four bedrooms, and I'm hoping we won't have any trouble renting it enough to cover the property tax, and expenses.  Furniture is just piled in that room in the second picture.  I have wished several times in the process that I had just torn it down though.

I still have two more colored fiberglass tubs to replace, but we're going to leave them for this season.  It will be rented weekly.  At least I don't have much money in what I've done to it so far.  I don't think there is another handicap accessible rental on the lake, nor one that allows pets.

 

[Mark J]

Looks lovely, Tom.  When do think you'll be renting it?

[wtnhighlander]

Yeah, when can we start booking vacations? 

[Tom King]

Hopefully this Summer.  Wedding planners already want the point, but I don't know that I will have it ready by this Summer.

 I have several people looking for someone with a screen for the topsoil, but it's BOOM times around here, and everyone has more to do than they can get to. I've never seen anything like it.

I need to get a dock and boathouse built, but can't even get anyone to come talk about it.  Boat dealers can't get enough 200k+ wake boats to sell, and any time a house goes on the market, there is a feeding frenzy.  There is a little ramshackle dock I built in the mid '80's when they lowered the lake, but it just needs to be torn down.

I'm hoping I can get the point covered with good topsoil in time to get grass growing.  The ground down there now is too hard, and poor to get any kind of a stand of grass as it is.  It's two acres, and a $300 dump truck of screened topsoil would get lost in a hurry.

The brick ____house is ready to jack the roof up tomorrow.  The interior walls were covered with smooth exterior siding panels, with screwshank siding nails.  It was too aggravating to pull the nails, so I ended up punching them all through with a nail set and hammer.  It took longer than I wanted it to, but it's done now.  I got tired of working on it today, and worked on the beach with the tractor.

[Tom King]

Normally I take it easy on Sundays, but with today and tomorrow looking ideal for this job, I went to work this morning.

The EM8000 sands beautifully, just like the Conversion Varnishs we used to know.  It doesn't sand as easy as sanding sealer, but really not bad at all.  This is what I mean by "powders up nicely".

Tomorrow is supposed to be warm enough for me to spray all day long, so I should be able to get enough coats of the Halcyon on them to finish.

Blowing 17 mph today, so a good day for sanding.

 

[Tom King]

I'll be glad for this job to be done.  Sanding, and especially hand sanding is near the bottom of the list of things I enjoy doing.

I was back and forth over there today so many times that I don't know exactly how much time I spent on them today.

Wind is supposed to be blowing 30 tomorrow, but I'll probably spray them anyway in the lee of the house, and put them directly in the garage between coats.

 

[Coop]

What you think each panel weighs? Looking good! 

[Tom King]

I don't think over 20 pounds.  It's some kind of light Cedar?? that I don't recognize.

64 degrees and 16 mph wind when I woke up this morning.  I really want to get this behind me, but I don't know if today is a go, or not yet.  

[Tom King]

Got the first two coats on them this morning in spite of the strong wind.  I set up with the house blocking the wind, and put the sections back in the garage as I sprayed them.  They got some tiny pieces of trash on them, but they look good enough.  Picture with window reflection on them is the first coat, almost dry.

The Totalboat Halcyon was obviously a little thicker than the Target Coatings EM8000cv, so I cranked the pressure up a little to 1000, but that wasn't quite enough to get the fluid flow I wanted.  1050 was just right.

 

[Tom King]

Put 5 coats on both whole doors, and had enough finish to put the 6th coat on the lower three sections of each door.  By 4:30, when I put that last coat on, the wind was down to 14 mph, and nothing got blown on the last wet varnish.

I'll post pictures after I put them back up, but it might be a few days to let them cure.

[Tom King]

People worry about the cleaning process of an airless rig, so I documented it some.

If I'm going to not be using it for a long time, I run Pump Armor in it.  It's freezeproof, and supposed to be good for the guts of the system.  It's blue. 

I wait until it's running completely clear water through it before sucking up the Pump Armor.  It comes in a quart bottle that the pickup fits into.

Since it's blue, it's easy to tell when it's all the way through because the gun will spray blue.  Because I know exactly how much of a container of Pump Armor it takes, I keep an empty container, and have a line marked on it.  To save the finish that's in the rig, I stick the pickup in the marked container with clear water in it, and know when to stop spraying finish.  I used that today to spray as much as I was comfortable with on the doors, and shot some in one of the Halcyon nice bags to keep.

 

[Tom King]

Normally, I just spray the cleaning water up in the air if the wind is blowing, on onto grass, or a pile of leaves.  For people living in cities, I decided to come up with another method today.  There was an empty 22 gallon trash can in the garage, so I used that.

Cleaning an airless rig involves holding the trigger, turning a switch, and swapping the pickup from one thing into another.

I keep three little trashcans that nest together with the rig.  One I used today to pour the Halcyon from the bags into to be picked up by the pump.  Water is kept in another one to drop the gun in between coats, and also to suck clear cleaning water through.

On the pump, there is a lever switch that throws the material in to the hose to the gun, or to a short hose that comes from the pump to clean the pump out separate from the gun.  The one from the gun assures that everything gets flushed out of the nooks and crannies of the pump.  I use the third trashcan for that pump cleaning line.  I make sure some blue comes out of that one when I run the pump armor in.

 

[Tom King]

I used the 22 gallon trash can to run the cleaning water into.  It also allowed me to see when all the finish was flushed out of the system, until it started running clear water.  I flush it with clear water longer than it needs to be, both through the gun, and through the pump cleanout hose, before I run the Pump Armor in it.

The trashcan made it apparent when the last of the finish was flushed out.  Today, without trying to save every last bit of it, just guessing it looks like I lost maybe three ounces.  Turn the tip around, and it sprays out a single stream.  I turn the tip around when I'm flushing it.  Running that stream onto the side of the trash can (one could use a five gallon bucket) showed me when the finish was flushed out, and only running water.  The water is always a little milky looking right after the finish is out, but I keep holding the trigger until it's spraying clear water, and run it some more.

To do that today, it looks like it took about 2-1/2 gallons of water for the whole process, including dumping the remnants in the pickup trashcans in.

edited to add:  I said 2-1/2 gallons, but I forgot that I put about a gallon of water in that trashcan to start with to make it easier to clean it out rather than the leftover finish sticking to it, and I also ran some more into it to wash that off the side, and rinsed out the little trashcans into it also with a water hose.

 

[Tom King]

The spray rig, all my tips in a plastic jar, a couple of different length tip extensions, the three trashcans, and Pump Armor bottles all fit in this plastic bin from Home Depot, ready to go again next time.  It looks awful because it's over 30 years old, and has done a LOT of work.  The pickup hose, and pump cleaning hose snap together when you don't need to separate them.

A lot of people are scared of airless mainly because of the "trouble" cleaning it, but it's really not that bad to stand there and hold the trigger, and switch around a few bins.

That fold up plastic table saves a lot of bending over too.

 

[Coop]

You might have mentioned it earlier. So the Halcyon is a water borne finish? 

[Tom King]

Yes.  I only spray water borne or latex through the airless now.  It's been over 25 years since I sprayed solvent based stuff, and won't do it again.  Water is so much easier to clean up.

https://www.totalboat.com/product/halcyon-marine-gloss-varnish/

The finished product looks just like an old fashioned high build Marine or Spar Varnish.   We'll see how it holds up, but I expect it should be pretty good.

I hated water borne stuff when they first came out with it, but it will be all I spray now.  Nice stuff.

[Coop]

Maybe I should ask this offline but what do you do with the residue in the bucket. You can plead the fifth if you like