Stacking Painted Items
What can you layer between painted items in a stack to keep them from sticking together in shipment or storage? June 8, 2011
Question
I have a customer who wants a large lot of casing and base sprayed with latex in my shop. He will then take the stock back to his shop until it is used on site. Based on my past experience, this is almost impossible because the latex will melt back into itself when stacked. What technique have you all discovered to prevent this damage from stacking? Slip sheets, cardboard, paper, magic or prayer? I'm all ears.
Forum Responses
(Finishing Forum)
From contributor D:
Is this finished stock? Or just primed?
From the original questioner:
I am speaking about finished product.
From contributor M:
We use cardboard sheets ripped into strips and used like the sticks on lumber stacks. They are bulky and hard to keep in place. Sometimes depending on the project, we will use a 36" roll of builder's paper. It is thinner and pretty cheap, plus it lends itself to giving more protection to a larger area, and in your case it would probably stay within a stack of moulding. I would still let the paint dry/cure as much as possible, or the paper will stick too.
From contributor A:
Don't spray the color with the contractor grade latex. Use a good acrylic paint and allow the proper pack and stack times. If in doubt, don't stack it. Having said that, most of the time it's best to stack back to back, face to face. If they do stick, at least you don't have packing marks or worse yet, paper glued to the surface.
From contributor J:
Way back when, we used butcher's craft paper (not sure if that's the name) to stack latex painted privacy shutters. It was wax impregnated, so no sticking I guess. It came in a roll. We did notice some press marks on the bottom ones. Probably put too many in the stack.
From contributor S:
Wax paper.
From contributor Z:
We use the small rolls of plastic wrap with the handle. The same one a lot of people use for bundling.
