Spraying Breathing Color Timeless/Glamour2 in basement?

[darlingm]

Anyone spray Breathing Color's Timeless or Glamour 2 laminates without ventilation?

Wondering how I would do with spraying BC's Timeless or Glamour2 in a basement, using a makeshift spray booth.

I'd be wearing a ventilator to be safe, but am worried about the lack of ventilation.  My BC rep says I shouldn't have an issue, that what doesn't hit the print settles quickly, and won't create a coat over everything in my basement over time.  Not sure if he's right.

The side room in my basement that I would be doing it in doesn't have a door closing off the room, just an open doorway, but there's no (easy) way to ventilate to outside.

My printer is in the basement as well, so definitely can't have a laminate buildup happening in it.

[Robcat]

Well, I have done this several times with Timeless. I use a basement hallway and hang up a 9 x 12 canvas dropcloth on the wall, letting it overlap onto the floor below. I tape the canvas print to the dropcloth and spray with the Wagner HVLP wearing a simple filter mask. The Wagner puts out a goodly amount of liquid and you can see mist in the air (wear a hat). It is not a trace amount. Smaller, more delicate sprayers don't fog nearly so much. I'm personally not worried about toxicity from Timeless with my mask on but I would not do this in a room with anything that might not care to have a coating of gooey mist, including my printer. I doubt you'd get much from one session but over time probably would.
Rob P

[John Nollendorfs]

The Wagner twin turbine units produce quite a bit of "overspray", (fog in the air) so yes, you should drape off the room if this is what you plan to use. However, since I had a small 6 gal. compressor, I recently bought a "cheap" ($15) HVLP gun from Harbor freight--http://www.harborfreight.com/20-oz-high-volume-low-pressure-gravity-feed-spray-gun-47016.html

This works great, very little over spray in comparison, and more consistent and more even spray results. Much more adjustable in terms of spray pattern, and adjustment of droplet size. Gun says you need at least 6 cfm at 40 lbs, but my compressor delivers only 3.5 cfm, and works fine when spraying 3 or 4 , 16x20's at a time.

I would highly recommend the  cheap Harbor Freight gun over the Wagner twin turbine!

[bill t.]

It builds up fast.  You need to cover every surface within sight of the nozzle including the ceiling just above the spray panel.  Duct tape and plastic will do.  For easier removal you can use Scotch Blue masking tape, but it doesn't hold as well.

The deluxe method covers the ceilings and walls with 1/8 or 3/16, 4x8 foamcore.  Once in a while you can coat the powdery buildup on the foamcore with thicker wet paint to kind of seal it in, until it starts to look like a bad cave set from an old Star Trek episode.

Sooner or later fuzzy little cotton ball Tribbles of buildup on the ceiling will fall onto your wet canvases when you are not looking.  Preemptively wisk that area with a broom once in a while.

You will also track dust into the rest of the house.  Be warned.  What seems trivial to you may seem otherwise to certain members of your household.

Cannot over recommend installing some kind of ventilation to the outside.  Even a small amount will clear the air pretty well.

And as mentioned, the Wagner is a real dog in the overspray dept.  The best guns will produce much less overspray.   In any case, there is some combination of distance and pressure which will put an optimal amount of paint on the canvas without bouncing a lot off the surface.  Experimentation is needed.

[Paul2660]

As a person who sprays timeless on a regular basis, with a Wagner, (the version of the gun that has the compressor separate), my opinion is that for once
the BC rep is a bit on the optimistic side.  As already pointed out, the Wagner's tend to push a bit more spray than needed, at a setting that will give you
good coverage. 

My method of spraying timeless on Lyve or Crystalline is the same,
1st coat is two passes one going up and down, and a 2nd going side to side.
after 20 minutes I will follow with 1 more coat side to side and see how well it looks, as I might need one more coat. 

After the 1st coat, the entire room I use will be filled with the over spray, in a thin mist.  As the BC rep said, it does tend to settle
quickly, but if your printer is in the basement also, I would be very very concerned about some of the dust getting into the printer.
I realize it's in a separate room but the mist from the spray will spread out. 

My setup is a old bathroom.  I can close the door and it has a window to the outside.  I use a small fan in the window to help push the
mist out, but as it's a typical bathroom window it's not very big.  Even with the fan, the entire room is coated in a light white coating of
dust that is the over spray from the coating.  You can clean it off with a vacuum which I do every once and while, but net everything
in the room and sometimes outside the room will get coated.  It depends on the size of the canvas I am spraying.  If I working with 36" x 84"
sized pieces, then the amount of mist in the room is considerable.

I have considered moving to the Fuji line, but may try the cheaper 15 dollar sprayer that was mentioned by John.  The Wagner I have is the
control spray Plus and IMO to get a good even coating you have to push a lot of coating.  It makes a nice fan spread, but does go through
the timeless.

Bill already mentioned the other bug a boo, the little pieces of cotton coating that tend to drop down and get on the canvas and land in the
worst place possible.  Make sure over time you clean them off.

Still, overall, I love the overall look of Timeless.  I used Glamour II for years and after working with Timeless now for about 2 years, I would never
go back.  I feel it's much much more durable finish and the gloss is amazing.

Paul

[darlingm]

Thank you everyone for your responses.

John Nollendorfs -- Thanks for the idea of the air compressor HVLP gun!  I have a compressor, however assumed those HVLP guns would be considerably more expensive.  There's even a Harbor Freight within a mile of my house!

bill t -- Are the fuzzy little cotton ball Tribbles and dust you mention made by the overspray?  It seems so weird to me that people are referring to the overspray as powder/dust and (I think) cotton balls.  Never would have guessed it would have turned into that type of form instead of the layer of laminate you get from rolling past a print.

Paul2660 -- Yeah, my hope was to tack up a strip of 10' or so of canvas of prints not yet cut apart, and spraying them all at once.  Sounds like that's going to create quite a bit of mist, even if I go with the Harbor Freight air sprayer.  I prefer Timeless, but have had occasional issues with bubbles so was considering trying Glamour II again.  I guess I occasionally roll it on too thick, perhaps spraying will go better with that.

[bill t.]

bill t -- Are the fuzzy little cotton ball Tribbles and dust you mention made by the overspray?  It seems so weird to me that people are referring to the overspray as powder/dust and (I think) cotton balls.  Never would have guessed it would have turned into that type of form instead of the layer of laminate you get from rolling past a print.

Trust me, you will have no difficulty with such metaphorical concepts when you actually start building up some serious residue!

It's especially bad if there is a some sort of "seed" available like a little piece of spider web or largish piece of dust or household lint already in place.  They build up around such things like pearls in a clamshell.

But just keep sweepin' the ceiling, and you will have no trouble with tribbles.

Edit...you will get skins on areas right next to your canvases where the backing gets wet sprays.  Tribbles build up other places in the room, where the paint spray that has escaped the canvas has had time to turn to tacky dust.

[John Nollendorfs]

Darling:
You might consider using Rosco Clear Acrylic gloss (or matte) transparent glaze instead.
http://rosco.com/scenic/glazes.cfm

They are considerably cheaper, and require one to one dilution before application. All your clear acrylic water based products are essentially Roplex, a paint base created by Rohman Haas back in the 1950's. Fine arts artists have been using these products for a long time.

I've personally have been using the Rosco products for 3 years now, and have had no problems what so ever. I know several other folks from this forum also use this product.

Since I started using the Harbor Freight gun, I'm starting to experiment with spraying my fine art papers also, to seal the microporous surface, and enhance the blacks.

[bill t.]

Unfortunately, my local Rosco "dealer" doesn't much care to deal with anyone but themselves.  I'm sure they're giving themselves a heckuva discount.  Sometimes manufacturers can be pretty clueless about what's really going on in the field.

[darlingm]

I've purchased the Wagner and the Harbor Freight Central Pneumatic $15 hvlp gun.  Trying the Harbor Freight one first, hoping for less overspray.


John,

I'd appreciate it so much if you could give me some feedback on how you use the Harbor Freight gun.

After doing a quick test run, I see the settings of the three adjustment knobs are going to greatly impact the quality of the coating, as I ended up with a horrible and very non-flat coat.  (Met expectations of my first spray attempt.)

Could you describe how you typically set your kobs?  If you could describe how many turns/half turns/whatever you set them at from being all the way in (or all the way out), that would be beyond awesome.  I know the bottom one and side one affect airflow, and the one on the back affects liquid flow.

Did the inside of your gun have a lot of oil in it when you got it?  I've flushed a ton of water through it to get rid of most of it, but it still smells a bit like oil.

Do you stay 1-1.5 feet away from the canvas?  Doing this, it seemed like I only had a 2-3" spray width.  I really need to get angled lighting in there to see what's going on better.
My compressor's working fine on it too.  I have a little 1.5gal 3.0CFM @ 40psi compressor, and it kept up for literally 5 minutes of me flushing water through it at a relatively low air knob setting that I was trying, without dropping below 40psi.

[bill t.]

You spray swath should be an ellipse between 8 and 10 inches wide, spraying from a distance of about 9 inches.  The biggest mistakes rookies make is  not keeping a constant distance, not keeping the gun at 90 degrees to the surface (especially in the left-right axis), and speeding up as the spraying progresses.

A 2 or 3 inch wide swath probably means your flow is way too low.

Load the gun with just water and watch the spray pattern against some dark surface as you try out the various adjustments. Spray water against dry masonry or the concrete on the ground to see how the pattern looks.  It's a good ballpark, although the coatings themselves are more viscous that water will give a slightly different pattern.

You should be spraying at a rate of roughly 4ml per square foot.  For that rate 2 passes gives a very nice coat, wait for the first pass to dry a bit before doing the second.  I pretty often use a cheap digital scale to verify how much I am spraying, 1ml = roughly 1 gram.

Also, before starting on a canvas always spray a test blast at a dark surface, like scrap box material.  You'll soon be able to use that to judge when you have the right flow.

I use a metronome when I spray to time out the individual passes, which I do only in the vertical.  I also have vertical marks 4 inches apart on the backing I use to hold the canvases, which is how much I advance the gun on each sweep.  Don't mind saying I get amazing consistency because of that, and zero bad spray jobs.

Edit.  Load the gun with water, spray it into an empty jug with a narrow opening for 60 seconds.  Should be about 80 to 120 ml of water in the jug.  That's just a ballpark, but sometimes that's better than nuthin'.

[John Nollendorfs]

Bill has given you a very good run down on spraying. Make sure you have the knob for "rounder" set to max flat pattern. Practice with water. The first coat can be pretty heavy, second or third coats need to be about one turn less of the back screw adjustment.

I thoroughly flush the gun with water each time, but after the 3  to 5th spraying, I find I need to disassemble the nozzles totally to clean out. Obviously take apart the finger tightened front nozzle. There is a wrench for the second "nozzel". but the third, requires a large hex wrench to remove. Hope you understand what I'm talking about.

[Colorwave]

Interesting, John.  Your approach is just the opposite of mine.  I always start with a light coat and finish with a heavy one, as I've found that Timeless in particular is prone to developing bubbles, and the more sealed the surface is, the less that is an issue.  That said, I just switched to Lexjet Sunset Reserve Matte canvas (from BC Chromata White), and am now using the Sunset coatings, as well.  I find that combination much more forgiving than the BC products.  I can't seem to make it develop the small bubbles that Timeless sometimes has, and it dries to a non-sticky finish much faster.  I wouldn't have ever tried it if BC hadn't recently changed the Chromata White canvas significantly, prompting me to sample the field for other choices.

[darlingm]

Interesting, John.  Your approach is just the opposite of mine.  I always start with a light coat and finish with a heavy one, as I've found that Timeless in particular is prone to developing bubbles, and the more sealed the surface is, the less that is an issue.  That said, I just switched to Lexjet Sunset Reserve Matte canvas (from BC Chromata White), and am now using the Sunset coatings, as well.  I find that combination much more forgiving than the BC products.  I can't seem to make it develop the small bubbles that Timeless sometimes has, and it dries to a non-sticky finish much faster.  I wouldn't have ever tried it if BC hadn't recently changed the Chromata White canvas significantly, prompting me to sample the field for other choices.

John, I think, uses the Rosco Clear Acrylic glazing products which probably isn't as prone to bubbling as Timeless.

BC changed its Chromata White canvas significantly recently?  What changed?

[Colorwave]

It is now significantly thinner and has different stretch properties.  It shows no lengthwise shrinkage, but grows in width after spraying.  Between the initial expansion and the additional stretch, I needed to reduce the width of a print by between .25" - .375" to come out at 36" wide when stretched.  The length works out exactly as before.  I also had more cracking at the fold than with the old stuff, most likely because the canvas is thinner and able to take a harder crease.  I know of others who have experienced the same results with the width discrepancy.  The change in canvas base was intentional on BC's part, but the other is something that the new head of technical support is still looking into.  I'm sure that it will eventually all sort out, but for the moment, I like a heavier canvas and the Chromata canvas is not something I want to continue using.

[darlingm]

It is now significantly thinner and has different stretch properties.  It shows no lengthwise shrinkage, but grows in width after spraying.  Between the initial expansion and the additional stretch, I needed to reduce the width of a print by between .25" - .375" to come out at 36" wide when stretched.  The length works out exactly as before.  I also had more cracking at the fold than with the old stuff, most likely because the canvas is thinner and able to take a harder crease.  I know of others who have experienced the same results with the width discrepancy.  The change in canvas base was intentional on BC's part, but the other is something that the new head of technical support is still looking into.  I'm sure that it will eventually all sort out, but for the moment, I like a heavier canvas and the Chromata canvas is not something I want to continue using.

Any idea if Lyve had a similar change recently, or if it was just Chromata White?

[Colorwave]

Only Chromata White.

[bill t.]

Also the most recent batch of Crystalline has changed in very significant ways.  Much stiffer base, and a surface that is more like the symmetrical, shiny pebbles look of Epson Canvas Gloss.  Sigh, I so want the things I use to make a living to be NOT in a state of flux!