On Mar 3, 6:46 pm, "joe" wrote:

Robert,

I picked up the Apollo 4 stage for a relative bargain, but haven't had the
time to fiddle with it yet. Do you have any experience with it? How does
it stack up against your fuji?

I liked the Apollo a lot. At the time though, I had it in my mind
that bleeder guns were not a good thing, and at that time that was all
Apollo had. The fit and finish were a little bit better than the same
on my Fuji, and they delivered an excellent finish. I was sure
though, that the bleeder function of the gun would get me in trouble.
I had this picture of spraying away and laying down a nice coat then
moving the gun to one side and kicking up some dust.

Apollo has their following and I think they are a top notch system. I
wouldn't concern myself with the air bleed aspect of the gun. Just be
careful where you point it! I was interested in them since they have
been around forever and always get really solid reviews.

All I did was demo one, though. I listened to the saleman's pitch and
he let me spray as much as I wanted to. It layed out a nice finish
with no problem at all, and I was spraying unthinned latex enamel
paint!

I haven't done a kitchen or anything like that. But my opinion is you
will probably love it. I might be able to help you if you are talking
about spraying paint, enamel, poly or lacquers, all solvent based
stuff.

For the water borne products, "ping" Barry and see if he is around.

I'm going to follow up on a couple of your info suggestions. I
really need
to get on the learning curve on this thing with the end goal of an
off-the-gun finish.

jc - that's where it's at. Speed, dash and accuracy win the day in
finishing. ALL of my finishing is 'off the gun' unless it is for me,
or they clients are paying to have it rubbed out.

Keep a good journal of what you are doing, including temps, material,
amount of air to the gun, etc. Like high pressure spraying, yo u will
need to thin from time to time, so don't forget to include that in
your notes. For me, one of the hardest things to do was to turn down
the pressure/air flow. You can literally shoot as much material and
make as much drift as a high pressure gun if you don't have it
adjusted right.

I finally got the hang of it by turning the pressure to the gun OFF.
Completely. Then I opened up the valve a half turn until it sprayed
the way I wanted (then I wrote that down) and started from there when
I sprayed that finish.

Feel free to post any questions here as there are a lot of experienced
finishers on this ng.

Robert