mej
Senior Heliman
Location: Frostbite Falls, Mn
| Recently I needed to paint some canopies and I damaged my trusty Sears touch up gun and ran out of clearcoat. I came across a fantastic urethane clear and a clone of a Sharpe HVLP gun that gave me wonderful results at a really low price.
PPG has an 'economy' brand of automotive Urethanes called Omni. It costs less than 1/3rd as much as what I've previously been using, and is easier to use.
The clearcoat is Omni MC260 'quick clear', about $20 a quart.
In addition you need Omni MH168 activator/reducer, $15 a half-pint.
A half pint would mix up with a half quart of clear to make 24 ounces of ready to spray with a pot life of 3 hours. Drying time can be as little as 2 hours, or overnight if left to stand.
This stuff is way cheaper than the PPG DCU 2020 that I've been using for years, My old DU5 reducer alone costs almost $60 a pint, and if you paint as many canopies as I do (which isn't much), you'll only use about 1/2 of the pint before it hardens up and has to be discarded. The other alternative that I considered is PPG Stratoclear, which will cost about $95 up front to get started.
So, I was very excited to try Omni which in total costs 35 bucks to get started. Also, because it's an HVLP system, you use a lot less. I mixed up 3 ounces for my Fury Extreme canopy, and I laid it in heavy and still threw away about 1/2 ounce after I was done. In contrast with DCU2020, I would mix up 8 ounces at a time, and usually had an ounce or less left over after one canopy.
Omni is mixed 2 to 1, so it comes out to $3.12 to cover one canopy using an HVLP gun which is very efficient. In contrast, by my guess, DCU 2020 through a standard gun loses about 50%. I typically used to mix up 8 ounces at a cost of $13.28, so I'm saving about 10 bucks a canopy.
I bought a fairly nice clone brand HVLP touch-up gun with its own valve for just under $100. This gun is gravity feed with a 6 ounce resevoir. Recommended pressure at the gun is about 45 pounds, and about 10 pounds at the cap. I was able to spray in my garage with hardly any overspray, while with my old gun I used to have clouds of overspray fill the garage so that I'd have to leave the door open. You can also use an airbrush for the clear, but it's more work.
The HVLP gun can be used for the primer and basecoats also, although I still prefer an airbrush for detail work.
If you want to try your hand at painting, this is an almost foolproof (and totally fuelproof) way to get a professional finish. These high solids urethanes can be sprayed on heavy with little fear of drips or runs. You'd have to try hard to screw it up. |
