The Framers Forum

Hi,

Considering spray painting Farrow & Ball colours rather than brushing and wondered if anyone had any advice on constructing a suitable spray booth to accommodate the frame?

And any other advice regarding spraying please.

Regards,

Graham

Don't try it indoors unless you want to spend a fortune on extractors. If you have a separate room do it in there or outside in a temporary steel frame garage as I do. You will need more room than you think.

Don't use Farrow and Ball paint, get it mixed at B&Q much cheaper and better IMHO.

Use a decent HVLP setup, something like the Appollo 1500. Be prepared to do a lot of cleaning of spray guns, emulsion is a bugger to get off once dry.

A well tested way is a cheap pvc greenhouse or smaller. About £20.

Buy some roofing battens (very cheap) and make as big a frame as you can fit. Then cover this with clear builder's polythene (screwfix) Ikea sells a "lazy susan" for only £5.50! Use this as the base for a turntable.
To be effective you would need a large dia. extractor and these are expensive. I once used a domestic fan ducted to out the window.
Take note of GeoSpectrum's advice on cleaning.

I pondered on making a spraying setup at one time. Same thing, lack of space.

It did occur to me that to make things easier with switching colours and cleaning would be to have a few extra
paint reservoirs with the various colours in, Plus, one with clean warm water to flush the gun. So do one colour,
switch to the water only can and then fit the next colour. When you have finished wrap the top of the reservoir
with clingfilm and you are ready for when you next need it. Very little mess and very little waste.

That's assuming you can buy spare reservoirs.

Farrow and Ball paint is already not a cheap paint to start with, but when it comes to considering quite a high level of wastage caused by any over spray, this might not be quite what you may have had in mind. I have no idea what percentage to allow for a likely wastage level, but I think that those who already use spray guns can probably offer a good ballpark figure.

Making your own spray booth won't necessarily be as easy as it may sound, the rate of airflow through the booth needs to be just right. To much air flow will increase the percentage of wastage and too little will allow to much over spray to escape into the rest of your working area.

There's a lot to think about when spraying things on a production line, I worked for much of my life designing items for production and your drying time will at least have some effect on how quickly you can get the next item into the booth to be sprayed. The actual background temperature has it's own effect upon this as well. I've seen some really nice spray work on wood over the years, so the idea can make a lot of sense.

Don't be afraid to ask lots of question about other related aspects of spray finishing, there's some serious expertise on this forum and some may have some good tips to help you get started.

It's also easy to over complicate things...
Shed, spray gun and ability to hold your breath for 5 mins and you'll be fine.

To spray frames in any number I think you need a dedicated room with extraction, drying racks and a sink for clean up. You will also need a reasonably sized compressor. We use one with a 300ltr receiver and it works quite hard

The prep of frames, both prior and between coats, creates lots of dust. We use an extraction table to work on to overcome this

We only spray water-based paints and gesso, and have a 4ft dry back spray booth, with a turntable. With the right setting on the gun, overspray isn't too much of a problem other than build up of paint/gesso on the turntable and the booth filter needs changing every month or so.

The other thing to consider when spraying frames are drying racks fairly close to the spray booth. We leave at least 4 hours between coats.

With the right prep and at least 3 coats of paint it's possible to get a really good finish with a 'closed corner' look.

Farrow and Ball paint is quite viscous, and will need thinning to spray. As was stated earlier, you can get similar colours mixed in paint shops, which will work out to be more economical.

I use Mylands for spray paint. They pre mix it for a HVLP. Occasionally use Little Greene it took a while to dilute it to the right consistancy, but means I can just buy a sample pot if its just one frame. The Mylands paint I use is a water based enamel and very pleased with it.

We spray on the Mezzanine, with a curtain around, facing a window with a super powerful extractor that I got for about £70 of ebay. Over spray isn't too much of an issue, if you get the settings right on the gun. Use a Fuji Q4 gold. It's not the best set up but more than adequate, we limit it to about 10 average sized frames a time due to drying rack storage space. 95% of frames we spray are white...gets a bit dull.

Plenty of prep needed in terms of sanding and filling as any imperfection shows. Quick coat of dilute size to raise the grain then sand back with 400, prime then 2 or 3 quotes of paint.

Based on the content and detail in my post re damaged mouldings in the members section, a spray booth may very easily start paying for itself soon than you would think.

Many thanks for all the replies. i'm not looking to do large volumes just two or three stacked frames with two different colours at a time for a couple of galleries but would welcome suggestions on a suitable extractor system. i'm only looking to spray water based paints.

Regards,

Graham

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