Noxious Cloud! RUN!

For ‘Priming the Firebird’ I slapped together some cardboard boxes to make a small ‘booth’ without the ventilation.  For those of you shaking their heads at the lack of ventilation, yes you should be shaking your head.  I’d shake my head too but I’m already dizzy enough from this little experiment.

The single most important thing I learned from ‘Priming the Firebird’ is that I’m going to need to ventilate my workspace.  The three seconds I used Duplicolor resulted in a cloud, yes really a cloud, of noxious gas.  The cloud dissipated relatively quickly but the vapours didn’t.  I had to open the windows in the basement and some on the main floor to air the house out.

This is a serious issue.   I’m going to have to look into creating some kind spray booth or alter my bench to include an exhaust fan.

A quick search of FichtenFoo.com (excellent site by the way) resulted in a nice write up about his spray booth.  http://fichtenfoo.net/blog/building-my-spraybooth/

He’s just using some cheapo bathroom exhaust fans and running it out of what looks like standard 2″ PVC similar to what you might have on your furnace for intake and exhaust already.

My bench is in the furnace room so I can just run the pipe out in the same general area as the ones for the furnace.  I won’t have any real problems getting the pipe out as I can run the pipe of the top plate, between the joists, and out the plywood to the outside.  Looks like he needed to drill his foundation!  Don’t think I’d want to do that.

I’m going to think about the rest of the modifications.  I’m not too sure I want bathroom fans.  Setting aside the look, they take up a lot of space.  Also, the fact that he has two fans doesn’t bode well for this solution.  I’m guessing that one fan doesn’t have enough CFM to vent the gases from only the top.  Could be that the CFM isn’t high enough for a wide open booth though.  Maybe focusing the draw closer and in a more enclosed space would make the fan more efficient.  Like I said I’m going to have to puzzle this out.

On a side note I think my noxious cloud is called ‘overspray’, judging by his comments on installing the second fan.

Looks like I’m going to making a trip to Home Depot.  It’s going to be fun explaining what I’m trying to do..

Priming the Firebird

I started to prime the Firebird today.

First thing I needed to puzzle out was how to get the body of the Firebird to by elevated but still accessible for painting.  I didn’t have anything useful lying around so I just used the cap off of the Duplicolor can.

Makeshift booth.

This probably isn’t the best setup as it doesn’t let you do the whole item at once without touching the item itself.  I was okay with doing it this way as I wasn’t sure about the results and I didn’t want to do the whole car if I wasn’t going to get the results I wanted.

Speaking of results, I’m not too sure about the finish.  I’m happy with the consistency and the thickness is good and the details are nice and clear but I don’t know about the texture.

Firebird - Orange Peel.

I think I doth detect orange peel.  I’m not really sure what orange peel is supposed to look like but the texture looks like the skin of an orange so I’m willing to call it orange peel.  I’m going to post this image on the forum and see what I can get in the way of feedback.

Some other photos of the Firebird below.

Firebird - Orange Peel.

Firebird - Orange Peel.

Firebird - Orange Peel.

Firebird - Orange Peel.

Nice Starter Airbrush Kit

While going through FichtenFoo.com I came across a recommendation of a nice starter kit for airbrushing.  “1/5 HP, 100 PSI Compressor and Airbrush Kit” from HarborFreight.com.  Looks like a full kit and it’s cheap.  Directly link here: http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=95630, FitchenFoo.com article here: http://fichtenfoo.net/blog/cheap-good-airbrush/

I’ll see how things go with the canned air but I imagine it must be nice to have a fixed pressure to work with.  Plus compressors are cool.   PUMP PUMP PUMP PUMP…