Holding Mouldings While Spraying with Finish
Thoughts on how to arrange mouldings for convenient spraying and drying, without bounce-back or overspray. November 12, 2006
Question
I have base molding pieces that are 16 feet long. I have a lot to do and can spray them in and around our booth's entrance. I'll use our airless that has 25 foot lines. I haven't done base molding before. Is it as simple as standing up sawhorses or some other fixture to hold up the molding when shooting it? What have you used to mount these strips on for coating them?
Forum Responses
(Finishing Forum)
From contributor T:
Most of the time, I just use sawhorses. I place the side being painted up and leave enough room to come back on another pass to hit the sides, and away I go. I have hung the moldings before and this works well, but I only do that when there are a lot of high and low points in the molding or a lot of curves.
From the original questioner:
Another question. When shooting the molding, my plan is to have 4x8 melamine sheets set up nearby so I can off-load the sprayed ones to a safe place until they cure. I will have little wooden risers screwed to the first sheet so I can get the base molding up off the sheet a little bit while shooting it. Still, though, I'm concerned about overspray. I'll be shooting a piece, then sliding it over to cure and I'm concerned that it won't be far enough away that the overspray might still reach it. I'm using ML Campbell Krystal - satin. In that these are 16 feet long and there's only one of me, I am certainly grasping for good techniques in handling these. I'm afraid I might need to hire help to move these once they cure long enough.
From contributor S:
I once had a thousand feet of moulding to spray for a school job. I built a rolling tower with two posts each, having 1-1/2 inch slats screwed horizontally to the posts. They were spaced about 2 inches apart all the way up the posts on each end. I was able to position the rolling tower far enough in the upstream air flow to keep the overspray off the sprayed pieces. Your solution is quite simple: you have to move them away or they will get snowed!
I don't recommend spraying on the 4 x 8 sheets, or you will get bounce back. Sawhorses are best so the overspray can flow down and get sucked out. Also, if you plan to just slide them over after they are sprayed, that won't be enough in my opinion, unless your fan makes a really strong current. The sprayed ones need to be put upstream or else... If you don't have the room upstream, try a partition lengthwise in your booth high enough to keep most of the overspray flowing out.
From contributor T:
I agree that sawhorses are the best. My thinking is that really, you almost have to have two sets of sawhorses, or a wall next to the spray booth that you can mount braces on to move the pieces over to when you're done spraying. If neither is an option, then you almost have to spray a set, then what until they off-gas enough to move, then move, then spray your next set. I can get away with spraying a bunch at a time because I use plastic curtains to make a portable spray room, so if I need more room than my usual spray room area, I just slide back the curtains.
