Frustrated!

Boomyal

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Aug 16, 2003
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I have been googling 'Best handheld airless sprayer for use with oil based enamel'. I get no reasonable responses. I get all these models with all kinds of reviews on how they do latex. I do not want to use latex paint. Most of these reasonably priced units do a lousy job spraying thick latex based house paints anyway.

I have one bedroom to paint and I want to do all the baseboards, window casings and door trim in oil based enamel. I hate brush marks. Several years ago I did all those in the rest of the house with a larger diaphragm operated airless sprayer. Short of the doors themselves, after prep and masking it took me 30 minutes to spray them all. I do not want to drag that larger unit out for one bedroom.

I have learned that some of the handheld airless sprayers do not want to use flammable paints or solvents that would be needed to clean them.

Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions based on all the above?
 

Boomyal

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I was looking at this one for my last project but ended up using epoxy and foam brushes instead

http://www.harborfreight.com/airless-paint-sprayer-kit-60600.html

easy cleanup (throw them right in the trash)

some of the reviews said they had good experiences with oil through it, but I wouldn't know myself

That is a pretty nice unit, tedny, but it way oversized to do the trim in one bedroom, The hose alone would about swallow up the quart of paint need to do the job.
 

Boomyal

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How about a small compressor and a small touch up HVLP gun .. http://www.harborfreight.com/4-oz-hv...gun-61473.html
Something like that ... The 2 gun combo is just a few bucks more .. Just a thought ..
I know it's not airless but you could keep the spray kind of confined ...

sphelps, when I repainted several years back, I started with the trim in the kitchen with an HVLP gun. It still threw way too much overspray to use in a confined space. With airless, you only need to do a minimum of covering and masking.
 

tednv

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Aug 6, 2012
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oh if its just for the one room just rent one from h.d.! i thought you were just looking for one in general to use for various painting projects
 

Scott Danforth

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use a small foam roller - no brush marks
 

redneck joe

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Add flotrol or penetrol whichever is for oil and cant see brushmarks. A good brush too. We did a bathroom cabinet in a very dark brown and you have to look hard to see any marks. If you are doing white trim it will show even less.
 

JASinIL2006

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We used a foam roller with oil-based paint on trim and it looked really nice, not marks or texture.
 

Tim Frank

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I have been googling 'Best handheld airless sprayer for use with oil based enamel'. I get no reasonable responses. I get all these models with all kinds of reviews on how they do latex. I do not want to use latex paint. Most of these reasonably priced units do a lousy job spraying thick latex based house paints anyway.

I have one bedroom to paint and I want to do all the baseboards, window casings and door trim in oil based enamel. I hate brush marks. Several years ago I did all those in the rest of the house with a larger diaphragm operated airless sprayer. Short of the doors themselves, after prep and masking it took me 30 minutes to spray them all. I do not want to drag that larger unit out for one bedroom.

I have learned that some of the handheld airless sprayers do not want to use flammable paints or solvents that would be needed to clean them.

Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions based on all the above?

I must have gone to the same school of painting as you and had a real distrust/dislike of latex paints. Not any more.
I have gradually switched completely to latex.....the technology improvements are continuous and the current latexes outperform oil-based in virtually every way. ...ease of application, cleanup, odour (or lack of) , fast drying, great leveling (brush marks gone) and durability.

The last holdout for me was trim paint at the cottage....because of the bright red colour, I had no option other than oil base. A couple of years ago Benjamin Moore closed the "colour gap" and makes a latex that can be tinted to what I need.

JMO.
 

JASinIL2006

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I must have gone to the same school of painting as you and had a real distrust/dislike of latex paints. Not any more.
I have gradually switched completely to latex.....the technology improvements are continuous and the current latexes outperform oil-based in virtually every way. ...ease of application, cleanup, odour (or lack of) , fast drying, great leveling (brush marks gone) and durability.


JMO.

I'd have a tough time agreeing that latexes, even the current crop, outperform oil-based paints in every way. Latex paints are light years ahead of even 5-10 years ago, but they still cannot match oil-based paints in terms of leveling, hardness, time required for full curing, and ability to be sanded (try sanding a blemish out of latex paint even a month after it's been applied; not fun!).

Overall, I prefer latex paint for many uses, and for it's lower (or absent) level of VOCs, but I have yet to see latex paints that can do everything a good oil-based paint can.
 

Boomyal

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The big experiment! I just bought a Harbor Freight hand held airless spray gun. It was only $14 with a coupon. Not much more than one good quality brush. I am going to load it up with oil based trim enamel and experiment on how it lays the paint down. In the mean time, I will have the room prepped and if the gun works well I will go straight to spraying all the pre-prepped and masked trim. It the trial run doesn't work out, I will toss the gun and break out the brush. If it does well, I will probably still toss the gun when I have finished the room.
 
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