Spray set up

27th December 5 hr

Setting up for priming

I got a few hours away from the Christmas festivities today to get ready for the priming operation.

The access to the booth proved a problem because the velcro is so agressive and because,when you pull the sides apart, you are shortening the height of the walls so the floor has to come up. This made getting in and out, particularly in full painting regalia while holding parts, very awkward. Because of this, I taped up the old corner entrance and cut a full-sized roll-up door in one of the side walls. The 'door' was cut from spare Powerclad material as it had to overlap the opening. I re-used the velcor (expensive stuff) tape to fix it to the opening at three points down each side and one across the bottom. This works quite well. When I take the booth down I might consider using a long zip to close the 'door'; just as you would find in a tent. I could then open or close it single handed in one movement.

I found some useful advice on setting up a spray gun in the Stewarts procedures manual and supplemented this with some more information that I found on-line. There was quite a bit of trial and error involved so I taped some newspaper to the inside of the booth and filled the gun with water. Using something with a colour in it would make this trial and error process a lot easier but would create more mess. I didn't want to waste any primer so I just made do. In the end, I got what I thought was a nice narrow vertical oval shaped spray pattern and the liquid seemed to be coming out of the nozzel at a reasonably good rate.