Getting the Right Paint Roller
George VondriskaDescription
Paint-grade project? Rolling paint on is easy, and it allows you to cover a lot of territory quickly. Like any job, it’s important to have the right tool. There are rollers, and there are rollers. Paint roller selection is important. Let’s make sure you’re getting the best roller for your paint-grade projects.
What not to get
When you’re roller shopping, don’t buy the same roller you’d get to paint the walls inside your house. Interior walls typically have at least a little texture to them. Maybe a lot of texture. So you use a roller with some nap. Nap allows the roller to get paint on the high spots and the low spots for uniform coverage. Additionally, since you’ve got a lot of real estate to cover, you’re probably using a 12” roller. That’s too big for most woodworking projects.
What to look for
In all likelihood, you’ve sanded the project smooth. If you use a roller with a deep nap, it’s going to leave paint texture on the surface, undoing the great job you did making the project smooth. Look for a foam roller that’s labeled as a fine finisher. The packaging or product info may specifically say the roller is good for painting cabinets and furniture. Shorter rollers, 4” or 6” long, generally work well for woodworking projects.
Should I thin the paint?
It’s always a good idea to test any finish before it goes on your project, but typically you can use the paint right out of the can with no thinning or addition of products like Floetrol.
If you want to spray…
It’s hard to beat the finish quality you get from a spray gun. If you’re painting lots of projects, you might want to consider spraying your paint.
A lot of projects, like this particular one, are paint-grade projects, and it's always true you should have the right tool for the job you're doing, and it's even true in this case, where we're painting. Right tool for the job being, a roller is a great way to take care of, of course, covering a lot of surface in a fast amount of time. I also like the finish it provides because it lays the paint out more evenly than a brush will. This doesn't lend itself to spraying because it's got dadoes and rabbets in it, and I don't wanna spray paint into the joints. So this is about roller selection. When you go look at a home center, what you'll find is rollers like this that are very, very fine and typically they're marked as being for smooth surfaces, or it might specifically say for cabinets and furniture and then you know you're getting the right one. So it's really the same as when you're painting a wall. If you have a wall with a lot of texture on it, you want a heavy napped roller so that it can go into that texture. We don't want texture here. We want this to come out nice and flat. So we want the opposite of a heavy napped roller. We want a really, really fine roller like this. I'm not doing anything weird with the paint. The paint is right as it came out of the can, no thinning, no flow troll. And if I do this with this paint, this roller, that's gonna result in a really nice surface when I have the second coat on these.
Carpenter, welder and paint