[jlsanborn]

Johnny is officially a painter, but things could have gone better!

Things I learned today....

1) Spraying grey primer over sand blasted parts with less than perfect light and less than perfect eyes SUCKS. Some contrast would've helped this ol' boy.
2) Spraying parts that you've hung by wire from the rafters SUCKS. They spin, you dance around shooting at the dry spots and miss, you hold them with your hand and screw up what you've shot while you shoot yourself in the arm....
3) Epoxy primer is like effin SPRAY GLUE!
4) Some things from Harbor Freight are OK while others SUCK. The little baby regulator I bought to hang off my gun was awful, but the gun itself was pretty sweet. Threw on a different regulator that I already had and things smoothed WAY out.
5) Those rubber gloves that I have tons of and hate to wear cuz my hands sweat.....WEAR THEM! My hands are NASTY and I've scrubbed the bugeezus out of them. I'll be sanding them off in the shower tomorrow with that grinding rock / sharpening stone Wifey has in there.
6) My air compressor(s) will work sweet. I have two in parallel with the pressure switches set for a lead/lag arrangement and the backup never even kicked on. I installed a big filter/regulator at the tanks that caught a bunch of water, but there was still moisture at the end of my line. I used an inline filter/separator at the gun, so hopefully not much made it through.
7) My shop-vac ventilation system kicked a$$ but I bet the neighbor hates it. It's loud as all get-out and I had her full-whack from about 3:00 til 10:00.
8) This crap is MESSY!!! One drop smears a long damn ways. Way worse than oil.

The epoxy went down super slick! I was thinking I was a pro, THEN I mixed the color. Major orange peel boys!!!! I think the $hit was too thick but wasn't sure if I could reduce it with laquer thinner???? It's a single stage urethane that came with just the color and a hardener??? I fiddle phuked with the air pressure and spray pattern / intensity and got OK results, but I'm still effin bummed. Some pieces came out nice while others I hate (like the damn wheels!!!). There's NO WAY I'll spray Butternut on the body panels if I can't get this sorted out. Overall I'm stoked and pissed......... This crap is expensive to experiment with and winter is coming!!!