Gramps' shop wrote:

Good advice, Mike. I guess that's why God invented scrap wood :-)

Yup - and in case my previous post sounded too harsh, let me just say that
every time I paint a car I tape up two sheets of body mask on the wall and
make some test shots. I shoot both the base and the clear at the paper.
Just to make sure what it will shoot like. I do the very things I suggested
to you (that's why I suggested them...). I vary the trigger pull, my speed,
etc. Painting is not an automatic thing. You will find that you have to
adjust some aspect of what you do to compensate for temperature, humidity,
the wife's current state of mind, etc., so a quick shot at some paper on the
wall is worth every bit of the time spent doing it.

I have a decent sense about you from your posts here so I'm confident that
you'll shoot some scrap. Go at it and try every possible combination of fan
size, paint volume and distance that you can come up with. Try to stay
somewhere between 6" and 10" from your scrap, but vary those distances. Go
beyond them and observe the affect. It likely will not be pretty. It's
just all about learning your tools.

Always remember when you spray to try to get the wettest coat you can
possibly get without getting a sag or a run. Dry is not good, no matter
what you may intuitively feel. Dry is bad - very bad. Shoot wet and learn
how to control that so you don't sag or run. Overlap passes by 50% or so,
and never... never... never shoot a double pass - until you really learn
what you are doing. Go ahead and ruin some stuff. It's only scrap.

And... get a good mask. HF actually sells a good disposable mask for under
$20. Get the one rated for organics (icocyanates) and keep it sealed in the
air tight bag between uses. The filters on orgaincs is only good for about
8 hours of time so you don't want it just laying out on the bench when
you're not using it. Don't screw with the other junk typically found in the
big box stores that say they are for painting. They're for finger painting.

--

-Mike-