Benefits of an HVLP Spray Gun

I wanna talk to you about spraying finish onto your projects. And specifically what we're gonna have a look at is an HVLP system and different kinds of guns that work with that system. More on that in just a second, but first off let's talk about why I spray my finishes. One application is projects like this, this chair has a lot of corners and nooks and crannies. And it's so much easier to get a uniform application of finish, with a gun, a spray gun than it is to hand brush or hand wipe a finish onto a project like this. It's pretty darn easy when you're using a brush, or a rag to leave spots with either not enough finish or too much finish. And you're either going to be dry, or you're going to have drips. Neither one of those are good. So complex projects, great reason to spray your finishes instead of hand wiping. Big tabletops, like we're looking at here, what a beautiful trunk of a walnut we've got in this top. Tabletops, you wanna make sure you've got a nice flat finish because it's so easy on these big flat surfaces to see any problems you have, any blemishes in the finish. So again, another great spot to use a sprayer, instead of hand wiping or hand brushing your finishes. All great reasons to use spray equipment, let's move forward and talk more specifically about that equipment. First thing let's do is define this HVLP idea. "high volume, low pressure." So part of what I really like about HVLP is we get finish on the project, not all over the shop. It gives you much better control, to make sure that we don't get this over atomization, this over spray, that from other types of guns can easily end up everywhere in your shop. Now, in this case, we're providing air to the HVLP using a turbine system rather than an air compressor. And here's the deal with turbines, this is a self-contained unit, when I turn this on, it's gonna push air through the hose to the gun. Now what's great about this is that, especially if you've got an older air compressor what you may have noticed is that sometimes it spits moisture or it spits oil or both. If that gets into your finish through your gun it's gonna mess it up. With this self-contained system, it gives you a lot more control to make sure that we've got good clean filtered air going into the gun, so we don't mess up the finish. It's gonna feed that air through the hose, We want a nice flexible hose there, that's plenty long to do the work. So you're not fighting that thing like a big Cobra, when you're trying to spray your finish on. Now, let's have a look at the guns, one of the things I've mentioned a couple of times is control, and a lot of that control comes from what we can do with the gun itself. So let's get some jargon out of the way here on the business end of the gun, we've got an air cap, right behind it is a fluid tip and right behind that is a needle. Now what's gonna happen is that, using the manufacturer's instructions, you're gonna run your finish through what's called a zinc cap. And based on how this goes and just follow the manufacturer's instructions, you're gonna determine which needle and air cap you need to use. So the tips of the needles are different diameters, corresponding to the fluid tip, corresponding to different air caps. So again, talking about giving you control over the finish it's the marriage of all these components that helps make that happen. Now, the other thing that you'll see in just a second is that with the air cap, we can control the fan that we get. So in this case, when the wings on the air cap are horizontal, the fluid, the fan is gonna come out vertical. And of course we can turn that so that we can change that we can get that fan go in any direction we want. Remember back when I was talking about that chair on a project like that, it's quite possible you're gonna change the direction of that fan, a bunch of times in order to make sure you get the fluid, the finish, exactly where you want it. Now let's do a little shoot in here on the paper, so you can see what this is gonna look like. We're gonna start with a vertical fan, turbine on. Couple of things going on here, I do wanna point out we're just spraying water today, that way I can talk and spray at the same time, I don't have to wear my protective mask that I normally wear when I'm spraying finishes. The other thing that we wanna do in addition to controlling the orientation of the fan, as we want to control the width of the fan. So imagine we're doing a big tabletop, or all you wanna do is get finish on the piece of banding that you've put on the front of a countertop. So a huge difference there, big expanse, small area. So using the controls here, we can control the width of the fan. So let's have a look at that. So there's my tabletop, we can dial that down. So here, we sprayed a bigger fan using that setting down here, much narrower. So again, tabletop versus edge banning, gives you that control you need so you don't have finish going where you don't want it to go and you do have plenty of finish on a big surface. Now, in addition to the width of the fan, we can also control the amount of finish that we're putting on the project. That's gonna come from the knob here, So let's have a look at that. So I've got not a of fluid coming out right there, significantly wetter application there, again, this is all about the control that we get here by learning about and dialing in the different settings that the gun provides to really control where the finish goes. Now I did talk earlier about this whole horizontal fan, vertical fan business, so let's give that air cap a spin, just so that I know you believe me about the fan change in directions. So a lot of stuff going on here, the turbine gives us nice clean filtered air to make sure we don't have anything going into the finish that we don't want there. The controls on the gun, give us that finite control we need to make sure that the finish goes on, where we want it and the way we want it. And learning about mastering those controls, learning about changing the air cap, the fluid tip, and the needle will all optimize the way the gun works to make sure that for your projects, they're getting the quality of finish that they deserve, for the quality of project that you've produced.