Well it's been a long, hot and sweaty weekend of painting. Weeks ago I was worried that the temps would be getting too cold to paint but this weekend was actually almost too hot to paint. Outside temps were low 90's so inside the garage was probably a few degrees warmer than that. We left the side door open with a box fan (and filter) blowing outside. I'm really happy with how the paint job turned out considering it was our first time using an HVLP gun. Like was mentioned previously, my compressor was just slightly under powered for the job but we made it work. It ran non-stop and we had another fan blowing on the head to try to keep it as cool as possible. There was just a fine line we had to walk between waiting for it to catch up and waiting too long and ending up with a dry edge to continue from. I'm a little bummed about the blue color - the swatch we chose was several shades darker than how it appears on the boat. All in all though, I'm very pleased with the outcome.
I'll let the pictures do the talking so here they are:
The garage has been converted to a paint booth, which literally took hours to accomplish, and the boat is ready for paint!
A few shots of us getting ready. Yes, i was more than a little nervous haha.
I was relieved after the first coat of paint was on and it actually looked pretty decent!
We took turns spraying - I couldn't hog all the fun parts. Here my son is applying the second coat of blue.
We let the blue dry overnight and then taped off and sprayed the accent stripe today.
And now for the final outcome............
Pic of the products we used. We mixed the paint, catalyst and reducer at an 8:1:1 ratio.
I want to say thanks for everyone who has taken the time to follow this project and also thank you to those that have offered advice and guidance. It is much appreciated! I'm sure I'll have plenty more questions coming in the next steps.
