Re: let's talk paint flow

Posted by Steve Miller on Jun 28, 2004

Ok, you have several problems. All sort of related.

Orange peel says to me that you have the wrong roller for the Brightsides or that you are rolling the paint out too thinly (spreading it too far).

I use the round end white foam rollers available at Lowes or Home Depot. The yellow foam rollers like we all use for epoxy do not hold the paint right (too thin, not enough foam) and give some texture from the open cell nature of the foam. The thin foam does not give enough cushion to the roller surface to smooth the paint out right. The white foam rollers are very fine grained and apply the paint very nicely. Please try one for your last coat.

Load it up well and roll it out evenly until the paint starts to be too thin and not cover (shows as texture not smooth glossy paint - orange peel?). How much paint you have on the roller as you lift it out of the pan really does not matter - it just means you can paint more or less surface before loading the paint roller again. The key is to roller it out. Load the roller by how much surface you need to cover.

Paint a few sq feet or so at a time. Thats all you will get out of my recommended roller. It is very important to roll the paint out evenly. It should be uniformly wet, but not heavy enough to run or sag. Tipping would not affect the gloss/semi gloss look you report, it should just pop any bubbles from the roller. Be very light with your tipping brush. Just the weight of the brush. I actually like to tip with a second dry roller using just the weight of the roller. The round ends on the rollers don't leave lines! On cool days with Penetrol in the paint I may not even tip.

The gloss - no gloss effect you are getting means you are waiting too long to tip. The paint is going off on you. Heck, its summer. Add a few ounces of Penetrol to the paint. The Penetrol will slow the paint down and help it flow better. Tip sooner while the paint is still wet. I tip every other roller load. Better too tip too soon than too late. If its warm then tip every roller load or so. If the brush drags its too late.

Wet sanding with 400 should be all the sanding you need to do for between coats. In two hours with 220 grit I could strip most of the paint off a kayak. I normally use a 3M pad (fake steel wool) between coats and only wet sand every 2nd or 3rd coat.

Sanding between coats with 220 is for paint salesmen.

Good luck!

In Response to: let's talk paint flow by Dennis Rioux on Jun 28, 2004

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