It's a little cold in Colorado..........Winter is here / Not as bad as in the Northeast but still cold. I was wondering what everyone was doing as far as painting is concerned? More specifically, airbrushing / spraying. It's way too cold out in the garage and I'm a little sensitive to the "better half" objecting to my doing much indoors, even using the paint booth.
Attached garage, about 37 Fahrenheit currently. Rattle cans work okay, but I bring them in for a half hour before use to warm them a bit. My usual build time has dropped from a few hours to a bunch of ten-minute excursions. Brush painting seems to be working out okay as well. Decalling has been a pip, I bring out some heated water (wrist warm, like baby formula).
You meannoone lives in apartments anymore?. ;- )
on 12/17/2007 4:41 PM Count DeMoney said the following:
Use acrylic paint and wait for the 'lesser half' to go shopping or something. :-)
No basement? Garage too cold? Well, if it is and that is your only place to paint, I would pick up some of those blue tarps and make yourself a 'tent' in the garage that you can heat with a space heater. You only need to get the temp above 50F. Make sure your paint and subject are indoors, warm and toasty, then go out into your 'tent' get the application done and bring them back inside. Painting with acrylics indoors using an exhaust fan in a window for short painting sessions will allow you to keep the wife's house odor free. Making an impromptu paint booth will help control the fumes and overspray. My paint booth is indoors and I can spray enamels without the whole house knowing it. My booth exhausts outdoors through a dryer duct, functional yet aesthetically pleasing on the outside. I have the ability to block it off (from the inside) to keep the cold winter air from infiltrating back into the house chilling my workshop.
I cannot airbrush when it gets too cold (well below zero) because my compressor in the garage will not start.
If it is above zero, however, I do paint. With an airbrush I do not even use my spray booth, because the airbrush puts out little overspray. However, for rattlecans I DO need a spray booth. I find that with a good filter much of the oder is gone, so I don't even vent it in the winter.
Do you have a basement? I run a pipe from my garage compressor to the basement, with a T-fitting so I can still use it for things in the garage.
Basement and acrylics with a venting pipe out the window. I also dont use a spray booth, there isnt enough overspray to warrant it with an airbrush. Of course it also helps that my better half is a mixed media artist and uses substances way more noxious than mine! Tis amazing how things get overlooked if the better half is an artist. Ray
Don you might consider enclosing your compressor in a cabinet. Use a
100 Watt light bulb mounted in a fixture near the base to heat the cabinet. A couple of small vent holes to allow the compressor to inhale and the moisture to escape at the top. We use to have compressor cabinets in the warehouse serviced that kept the sprinkler system filled with air. The temperatures along the outside walls of the metal building were subject to some extreme cold temperatures, the light bulb, in some cases, two provided ample heat to keep the compressor and its oil warm enough to run on the coldest of days. We installed a little piece of transparent colored glass to act as an indicator to check to see if the lights were working without opening the cabinets. Never had a compressor fail...if they had, it would have rained hundreds of gallons per minute inside the building. Not something our customers would appreciate considering the materials stored in these warehouses.Also be sure the air supply lines are insulated. The charge of cold air hitting warm pipes indoors will cause water condensation in the system. Having a drain at the lowest point of the system will help take out the water in conjunction with the moisture trap/regulator.
I gave up spray painting and my life is MUCH simpler. I have just as much fun with less fumes. On the other hand, unless they create a special category, I'm not going to win any contest, I suppose. I don't want to hijack your thread, but I have question: has anyone won a national or regional IPMS competition with an aircraft model that was not sprayed? Recently, I mean?
probably. i have seen guys brush coats i wouldn't believe with eyeballing it.
Count DeMoney wrote: : It's a little cold in Colorado..........Winter is here / Not as bad as : in the Northeast but still cold. : Heck, painting season has arrived here in Central Texas. I have been using Tamiya gray/grey primer, metallic black and gloss clear from a rattle can, and while the results are very nice, I don't know about going to the Tamiya primer full time - it seems wasteful to have that much overspray.
I have also been shooting Polly Scale using a CO2 bottle, and it is hard to get any more quite than that!
The real problem in Texas is the summer time - it is a race to get the pieces painted before the respirator fills with sweat, and you drown...
Bruce
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