Mike:

At our local HF, they actually had a guy that had used couple of the
paint guns, but more important, he is in charge of returns for painting
items as well as a few others, but he considers painting his baby.

As a sidebar, I have been buying stuff there like drop cloths, hammers,
air nailer hose, fittings, etc. for years and now the store has never
been cleaner, the people never more friendly, and the store in
altogether better shape. Maybe they are working on their image.

As for your assessment, you were right on with this young guy at the
store. He pronounced the first gun "iffy", said they had taken a few
back, but was well aware of you concerns on the action. He felt like
it would be wise to look at several, take one home to try it out, then
bring it back if I didn't like it. Not too encouraging. I feel like
if that gun has that kind of feel to it (out of three I tried, all but
one had rough, catching triggers) I won't want to rely on a tool to
take out to the job that has such poor QC in manufacturing.

The second gun, was actually a really nice piece of equipment. Double
reinforced bottom on the cup, really nice smooth action, and he said
they just don't get them back. They sell lot of them to guys that use
them to shoot primer in welding shops and to those that use them for
"shop only" guns for heavier finishes. He was really pleased with this
one. Sadly, no way I could fit it into my portability requirements.
On the bright side though, he said that he will probably have that one
on sale in the next 2 -3 weeks and if they follow their sale patterns,
it will probably be about $15. On the list for a shop gun.

The ABS gun had the smoothest action, and really looked like an
expensive gun. The action was silky smooth, and the fit and finish was
well beyond some of their other stuff. Problems was, in the guns I
looked at (they were all dark blue plastic, so a black crack was easy
to see) the cracks. If you look at the ad pic, they were cracked at
the base of the hook, to the lower right of the pivot pen on the
trigger. This is the weak point of the casting but when I pulled the
trigger, I could see the flex, even on the ones that weren't already
cracked.

But, but, but... I could use some sage advice here...

They had a really nice gun that was in their $35 dollar range that they
are discontinuing. It is on sale for 1/2 price, about $16. It was a
large, solid, polished affair with a quart cup gun. It was set up so
that my little compressor (with the afore mentioned reserve tank) could
push it. It only needed about 4 cfm at 50 lbs, so I should be fine
there. Great feel to the packings, well built,,, so why are they
closing them out?

It has a .8 mm nozzle! Now I understand why they are so low on the cfm
requirements, they don't need much because they don't throw much
material, and certainly not thick material. I know I can thin anything
to the point where it can be shot, but I have to be careful not to
exceed the manufacturer's guidleines for thinning, and I also don't
have the time (contrary to popular belief, remodeling is very
competitive) to build coat after coat to get the 2 or 3 thousandths
required by different manufacturers for a warrantable end product.

With a .8 mm nozzle, would I be able to spray my thick oil based stuff?
My little Binks 5 knockoff shoots the urethane oil based coatings I
like with only about a tablespoon of thinner in 16 oz. So it isn't
really thinned much to me, but it does shoot perfectly as opposed to
unthinned. The coatings guy that sells this stuff gave me the formula.


So the gun looks great, but I am worried about the .8 mm nozzle. I
know this smaller size is something that is usually employed to shoot
lacquers and well thinned build coat finishes.

I know what really has me going about the gun is the ability to use my
compressor. Ideally, I would go the client's house, tear out and hang
their new door. Then I would put away the nail guns, attach my
filters, turn down the compressor and start mixing paint. All from the
same machine. Now my little Binks knockoff works great for 36" doors.
But as you know, the gist of the problem now is constant refilling for
larger projects. I am afraid that when I want to spray larger
projects, this will not only have the feature of being inconvenient,
but could lead to an irregularity in the finish. To finish one large
set of the burglar bars on the house that got all this going for me, I
have to refill the little gun 4 times!

BTW, do you have any idea what the nozzle size would be on the little
Binks 5 knockoff I have could be? I am wondering that as a trim gun if
it might not be somewhere in the .8 range and I just don't know it. I
am wondering if it is but cannot find any info on the gun nozzle size
anywhere. If that were the case I would run down and buy that bigger
..8 nozzled gun and let this go for a while.

Well, the good news about HF is this.

When I spent my hour down there looking at guns, I spied a few
replacement cups for the larger guns. Nothing larger for the little
B5, but I looked. But says the guy, you might check in the back on
their newly designed "Clearance" isle. I went back there, and there
were two nicely polished, unused teflon lined cups, but they were 3/8"
NPT at the connection, not 1/4".

However, HF is now discontinuing all AMFLO products, so all of them
were right over the cups. So... I picked up the B5 from the front of
the store and took it back where I was, and fitted a brass female
coupler to the bottom of the head after taking off the tank top/siphon
assembly. Then I put a 1/4 to 3/8 inch male coupler and screwed the
the clearance tank onto it. Success! The tank was $5, the fittings
were a buck, and I think I now have a nice bandaid.

It is feels little clumsy in the hand (full of paint should really
magnify this a lot) and it is obvious it will be harder to use
without a pistol grip that you need on a quart capacity gun. I am sure
that metal fatigue would be a problem and I would ruin my little gun's
fittings by hanging 4 1/2 pounds of paint and tank off that little
brass frame that was made for 7oz (holds 6 BTW). It is not designed to
hold 5X the weight. I will fill the tank half full, but then using a
gun at half capacity is kind of self defeating to me. Plus, this fun
will leave 1/4 of paint in the larger tank, not the 1/2 tablespoon I am
used to. More to clean up and dispose of on site, which means to put
in my cleanup buckets. So this is a bandaid, not a fix. I don't see
this in any way as a permanent solution.

At any rate, if you are still with me, I wanted to let you know that I
did indeed follow up our conversation here. Too many times people ask
for help/advice and if the responses are acknowleded, it is almost
always with a "thanks, I'll try that." I always wonder how many do...
But since you in particular took so much time, I wanted to respond
directly to you. Thanks again for you help, you've been great.

Robert