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

wrote in message
oups.com...
Mike:


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.

This one would make a good gun - with the reservation that I haven't shot
it, but it has all the right stuff.


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.

Hmmmmm - missed that in my examination. Good eye.


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

All right, but I usually charge for this. First - never go to bed with an
ugly woman. This of course does not assure that you won't wake up with one.
Second - oh... you were talking about sage advice on paint guns...


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.

Do you have a link to this gun from the web site?


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.

1.2 or 1.3mm would be much better. .08 is fine for stains and thin stuff,
but you'll not like what it does for your work. Do they have a tip kit for
the gun?



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.

Not sure what it would have. There's no mention on the web site. I'll have
to check what size on have on mine. I really can't remember.


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.

I don't know that it will really strain the gun frame that much but with the
top lever it might indeed be quite akward to use. Let us know how it works
out.


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.


Sure wish my wife would say that about me. Happy to help out.

I'll go look at my tips again and post what I have on my guns. We've been
without power for two days and I've got the generator running, so we're
doing all of the normal things, but I haven't been hanging around out in the
garage for the past couple days.

--

-Mike-

Mike:

The discouraging thing about HF is that often time they have web only
specials that are not notated as such, but they don't have the product
in the store. Or, they have the product on sale in the store, but not
on the web so I don't know about it unless I go over and poke around.
Now, after looking at every single gun on the website, I cannot find
the gun they had on sale in the store.

I went over there to take a look at this gun along with your
suggestions as it looked portable, fit the cfm requirements and had
about 3X the capacity of the B% knockoff.

http://tinyurl.com/gm28g

However, they don't have it in the store, and cannot order it. Thought
it could be a winner, but I couldn't even see one. And since the gun
is a little different than its sisters on the site, I would really like
to see one in person. I have bought enough stuff at HF to know better
than to go sight unseen. But as they say, not gonna happen.

I did see this one on the website

http://tinyurl.com/44fd

but did not see it in the store. I saw one similar in the store, but
it did not have the 1.5 cfm at 30 lbs. as a requirement. The
requirements on the one in the store were much higher, as were the rest
of the requirements on this website. It did look the same, though.

Frankly, I never knew that HF was carrying so many types of spray
equipment. The new guy told me that they sell a ton of it, enough to
really surprise him.

In don't know if you were aware of this, but HF will carry EXACTLY the
same product with different product and SKU numbers. I was looking at
something there to buy a few years ago, and was confused since I
couldn't see any difference in the products except one was literally
half the price of the other (it was a side angle grinder actually) and
so I broke down and asked the manager. He told me that it was a common
practice for them to change up the numbers and designations so that
they could keep an accurate count on sale items, and more importantly,
the batch numbers from their bulk Chinese suppliers. If they got
10,000 paint guns in 1,000 batches with sligthly differnet numbers on
the box/sticker, they could tell when and where they were manufactured
to keep up the QC.

I will pass by HF tomorrow and see if they have any of the .8mm guns
left (I am now hoping that the Chinamen didn't just leave off the "1"
in the batch I was looking at!) and will get back to you here with a
model number.

BTW, what's up with the electric outage? Are you one of our Northern
neighbors that is taking a beating with these last few storms?

Robert

Mike:

This is exactly what I mean about HF inconsistency.

http://tinyurl.com/44fd
This url did not work for me.

A check on the website and that gun is no longer available. That means
they will close them out in the stores.

I must say, you are pretty damn calm to not have electricity. Down
here in S. Texas where I live (San Antonio), we never go without power.
I can't imagine being that calm if almost a quarter of a million were
without power here.

I am imagining something like "The Omega Man".

Back here later. I am off to HF tomorrow to check them and will ping
you when I have one of them hooked up and spraying.

Good luck on the power situation.

Robert