Hi Ron

I don't paint my turnings, however I do have some spray painting experience.
Get your initial wood surface as smooth as you can, than spray several
coats of paint on but let each coat dry a day or so, than you sand very
fine until smooth and spray some more coats on, after that sand until
you are satisfied with the finish going finer and finer.

Have fun and take care
Leo Van Der Loo

Ron Headon wrote:

Hi all,

I know this may be a somewhat heretical idea to some but I've been
experimenting with airbrushing my turnings. Binh Pho makes a superb job of
it and I have to say that he's the main inspiration behind this although I
would never be able to aspire to his creative genius (I'm not being
sarcastic - I really do think his work is out of this world). Anyway, here's
the thing; I've been airbrushing acrylics onto a beech bowl with a
reasonable level of success apart from the fact that when dry the painted
area is incredibly rough - even though I "raised the grain" and sanded back
before applying the paint. Sanding back the painted area to make it smooth
simply removes the paint. Overcoating with an acrylic gloss coat simply
makes the whole thing very rough - as well as cloudy. Unperturbed, I scraped
all the paint off with the trusty bowl gouge and started again. This time I
didn't use the gloss coat on top of the acrylic colours - I used carnauba
wax instead to see what kind of effect that would produce. In a word, the
result was "awful". I can't work out how to produce a nice smooth, even
glossy, finish. Would it help if I applied cellulose sanding sealer first
and airbrushed on top of that? Any other ideas about what I can do to
achieve what I want (apart from totally abandoning this subversive obsession
and just letting the figure and beauty of the wood speak for itself!). If I
can nail this problem the design possibilities are practically limitless.

Thanks for all replies

Kind regards

Ron Headon
Swindon, England