I need to spray lacquers and clear coats on stained cherry plywood speaker cabinets and I need a pro furniture grade finish. Any suggestions for an hvlp spray rig under 600.00? or is this impossible?

audiowood wrote:
I need to spray lacquers and clear coats on stained cherry plywood
speaker cabinets and I need a pro furniture grade finish. Any
suggestions for an hvlp spray rig under 600.00? or is this
impossible?

Check Harbor Freight. They have a very good HVLP solution for well under
that number, and plenty sufficient for your needs. It will deliver the
results you desire - if you have the skill to make that happen. That's
where the rubber really hits the road. The spray device is only part of the
equation. The bigger part of the equation is you. You really can't expect
that any spray gun system is going to deliver a professional finish just
because it costs a lot of money or is a really good gun. You still have to
apply the finish properly.

Without turning this into a diatriabe on proper finishing procedures, I can
spray a show room finish with a $30 Harbor Freight suction gun for you if
you want, but it will cost you more than that. You can spray an orange
peel, dry overspray finish that looks worse than a rattle can with a $600
HVLP gun if you don't know how to spray. It's not as much about the gun as
it is about how you use a gun. In short - if you don't know how to spray,
you can produce as bad of a finish with the best gun in the world as you can
with the worst gun.

Going back to my opening comment - there is nothing at all wrong with the HF
HVLP unit and it is priced well under that $600 you mentioned.

--

-Mike-

On 1/3/2014 6:04 PM, audiowood wrote:
I need to spray lacquers and clear coats on stained cherry plywood speaker cabinets and I need a pro furniture grade finish. Any suggestions for an hvlp spray rig under 600.00? or is this impossible?

For 600 you have a choice of many hvlp systems. But you will get the
finish you are looking for with less than 600.

Try the earlex

--
Jeff

On Friday, January 3, 2014 5:04:53 PM UTC-6, audiowood wrote:
I need to spray lacquers and clear coats on stained cherry plywood speaker cabinets and I need a pro furniture grade finish. Any suggestions for an hvlp spray rig under 600.00? or is this impossible?

To expand on Mike's good advice, if you have a good compressor, for a project that small you might try one of HF's CAS low volume spray guns. I use them on a fairly regular basis and they have proved to spray as well as just about any gun out there.

If you are spraying clear finishes such as lacquer, poly or shellac make sure you get a gun with a tip no larger than 1.2mm. Even though the poly will seem thicker in the cup, don't thin it unless you need to as most of today's polys are made to spray as well as brush or pad.

Another thought is to pad the poly on. Since you are probably not worrying about abrasion and water resistance on speakers, a pad finish would give you a nice subtle effect with satin poly.

If you are applying lacquer, spray it. It takes a good hand to apply lacquer with a brush or pad but it is pretty forgiving to spray and fairly easy to fix.

Remember... always practice on your scraps!

Robert