So I am not real happy today.

I went to Home Depot to get some Behr paint (one of the recommended brands for DIY speaker finishing), and I am thinking that I want an acrylic enamel.

I talked to two different paint people there. I told them what I was doing and that I wanted to use the HVLP sprayer that I bought from them. They both agreed that I did not want acrylic enamel, but instead would be much better off with latex enamel. It would spray nice, and be durable. Ha. Wrong.

The stuff sprayed just crap. I used Floetrol (which they also recommended) and water (per Behr's instructions) and thinned it down to the right consistency using a viscosity cup. I did some test spraying, and just couldn't get it the way I wanted no matter what I did. It turned into a runny/saggy mess, and that was with light coats that didn't even completely cover the primer underneath. I thought that maybe it would level out, but never did. It was starting to run. What they heck? It was such a light/fine coat. So I decided to get out a fresh roller and roll over it while I still had the chance. That was fine, but now I have a fine orange peel finish.
Ugh.

So I wait about 10 hours (says it is "dry" in 1 hour, and can be recoated after 2 hours). I go out and do a light sanding with a 320 grit. This took off a few stray bugs that landed in the paint, and rubbed the paint off of the edges in spots. Ugh again.

So I skip the sprayer and just go with a new viscosity that is more for rolling on (basically it was full strength paint plus a touch of the Floetrol and a splash of water). that went on a lot nicer, but of course it will be a fine orange peel when done.

I think that all said and done, it will look OK, but durability will be zero. The primer coat was so smooth that it was possibly TOO smooth for the paint to stick to.

So then, I go back to some cheap ol' Rustoleum enamel paint that I used previously, and that stuff sprayed just fine on my test cardboard. So the Behr stuff that the two "experts" at Home Deport recommended clearly was the WRONG stuff. I went online and sure enough saw a lot of woodworkers saying to NOT use anything with latex for cabinets, bookshelves, or anything that might ever get bumped. The latex will always stay "soft" even though it is an enamel.

So we will see what it looks like tomorrow, but I have a feeling that this will be a disappointment in the end. Sure, I could sand it back down to primer and get different paint, but at this point, I just want to finish it. It will never be seen anyway, and I did learn a lot from this build anyway. I just need to move on to other things that my wife says have been getting neglected lately.

Here are a couple of shots of the wet and just rolled over 1st coat. They did dry a little better. I will take some additional pictures tomorrow when things are dry and I can get more natural light on it to get a better photo. So anyway, the 1st rolled coat photos:




Farewell - June 4, 2020