Well, it took even longer than anticipated to get things done for tonight. It is 2:05am as I am beginning to type this, but I have the spray gun cleaned, and my mess tidied up for the night. The paint can says to wait at least 4 hours before recoating, so it will be after I wake up before I get another coat on there.

So here is a run down (with some fresh pictures:
First up was getting the rear brackets off (yeah, I ignored the note from Axiom).


The top bolt comes off with the same allen wrench that the tweeter and woofer use.

The bottom bolt also uses the same allen wrench on the outside, but you must remove the nuts on the inside that hold the wires that go from the bolt to the crossover on the inside of the speaker. These nuts are just a bit wider than the tweeter opening, so I used a ratchet to loosen them, and then a small (mini) breaker bar just to basically give me a grip on the socket. Pretty easy, but again, must be done.
The red circles mark where the nuts and the wires connected to the bottom bolt when looking at the inside of the speaker cabinet.


I quickly sanded around the holes in the back as there was a bit of "something" there from the bracket.

Then I stuffed the inside with crumpled up newspaper, and went around the speaker openings with a variety of tape.

I tried blue painters first, and it was fine for the woofer opening, but didn't want to curve enough around the tweeter one. Next I tried "Frog Tape" and it was terrible. After about 2 inches, I pulled it up and moved on. Then I tried regular taupe colored masking tape that was a little narrower and it worked ok. Not as good as the blue on the woofer, but better than the blue on the tweeter. Then I tried green painters tape and BINGO. That worked the best for making the curves and sticking pretty well.

We will see how they handle paint as I wasn't going to go back and redo the others, but I did go over the tweeter area from the blue tape speaker.

Here is a speaker stuffed and taped.


And here is the brand of the green tape.


Next, I prepped the garage with drop cloths, and my "hangers." I moved the heaters around a little bit, and filled up the compressor. I connected the HVLP gun and tweaked the air flow to be around the 40 psi max just so that I knew where the top end was and could turn it down if need be.

Then I was almost ready to hang the speakers. Since I had crumpled up newspaper, the cabinets had "newspaper fingerprints" on them. I planned to clean down the outer surface anyway and wipe it with tack cloth, so that is what I did. Right, wrong, or indifferent, I just used Windex sprayed on to a paper towel. This is fairly high in alcohol it seems, and dries quickly. A few quick scrubs and the cabinets were clean again. Oh, I should mention that I washed my hands a LOT from right before this until I was done. I didn't want anything contaminating the surface.

So they were cleaned, dried, and wiped down with the tack cloth and then put on the "hangers."


After setting them up, I went inside and got the paint ready. I mixed 2 cups of paint and 1 tablespoon of water. After they were nicely mixed, I added 2 tablespoons of Floetrol and mixed it in. I had some left from my previous project, but it was all separated and had gotten a bit chunky, so I had to buy some new. I used so little compared to what comes in the $6.50 jug. LOL

After mixing that up, it still didn't seem thin enough, so I added a 1/2 tablespoon of water, mixed, and said "Heck, I don't know. Looks good to me I guess."

I poured it into the cup of the sprayer (through a filter funnel of course), and headed outside.

I grabbed some cardboard and fired things off. I had it set to pretty much maximum air and maximum paint in a fan pattern. The problem was that I had to get somewhat close to get good coverage, although I know that it will take a couple of coats to be nice and even. I probably needed to dial in the settings a bit for either a less wide pattern, or maybe less air, but it was working so I just went with it.

I sprayed the bottoms first. I don't know why, I just did. Then I went to the top, then the back, followed by each side, and then the front face. Repeat, repeat, and repeat.
No runs. No splatter. Fairly even coat.


These will hang here overnight, but I just checked on them since it has been about an hour since I finished spraying, and they seem dry already. There is a slight texture to them when you touch them, but definitely smaller than orange peel, and I just don't know if that is because this is flat laytex and thus naturally feels a bit "scratchy."

I will let them hang, like I said, until morning, and then probably given them a super light sand with the 320 grit to see if that does anything positive. I will also mess around with the sprayer settings a bit more as I got nervous when testing tonight thinking that I was going through a lot of paint and I only had a little over 3.5 cups to use (2 cups were in the sprayer). After I was done I had about 1.8 cups left in the sprayer. I completely forgot how much coverage you get with so little actual paint when spraying. I have PLENTY left to use tomorrow and to tune it in a bit.

So anyway, it is now 2:35am and I am heading to bed. Oh, and yes, I saw that the one greenish drop cloth that I put up on the garage door was falling down and I had the heater under it. I have since taken down the drop cloth.

Oh, last thing... I love how little overspray there is with HVLP. I am sure that there is some underneath the speakers, but I was worried about it being all over the place, and it really wasn't. The paint that you see on the drop cloth is from other projects, not this one.

Until tomorrow....

Farewell - June 4, 2020