Statue bases – day 8
My intent was to spray a third coat today, but after checking on the dry bases, I determined that were actually pretty good. The finish was smooth and even, and these bases are not in a high traffic area, so two coats will be sufficient. Since they will have some heavy statues on top, I do think I will place one more coat on the top, but I will do that with a brush. That means the spray booth can come down and I can move freely around my shop again…
Done spraying
I have re-used these plastic sheets four or five times now and a lot of the over-spray, that has hit them, is starting to come off in flakes. It is probably time to get some new sheets of plastic.
Over-spray just flakes off the plastic sheeting
Making my mark
While I have these boxes up on blocks, I took the opportunity to apply my mark to the bottom. I made my own maker’s mark rubber stamp, a while back, and I still use it when I think about it.
Close enough
Sanding down the top with 600 grit
I prepped the top surfaces of the boxes by sanding them down with some 600 grit paper this time. I think the 400 would have been fine, but I wanted to try the 600 since I had it. After I wiped off the tops, I got out a disposable chip brush to apply the last coat. First I made sure to pull at the bristles to make sure none were loose. You don’t know how annoying it is to find a loose brush hair in your dried finish…
Brushing a third coat on the tops
Third coat on and drying
While the final coat is drying, I start cleaning up the sprayer equipment.
Cleaning out the sprayer
The Earlex is pretty easy to clean, but when you use oil-based finishes, you have to clean it out with thinner. Nasty stuff, it turns my blue nitrile gloves to jelly. I had to buy some heavy-duty rubber gloves just for this job. Now when you spray water based stuff, clean-up is really easy. You basically just fill the can with water and spray it out.
Lubing the sealed parts
Last thing to do before re-assembling the gun is to apply petroleum jelly to any of the parts that move through any of the seals. This keeps the seals from drying and cracking.
Putting everything back together
I packed up all of the sprayer supplies, back in their cabinet.
Back in the cabinet
After letting the last coat of poly dry, I gave both boxes a final polishing by rubbing them down with a wad of brown paper bag. It smooths away any final dust nibs and leaves the surface feeling soft and smooth. If you can’t find brown paper bags anymore, get some take-out at Chipotle, they give you the nice big, thick brown paper bags that work well for this application, and I like their food, so it is a good excuse…
Final polishing with a paper bag
Shined up and ready to go
Well that about wraps up the statue bases. Hopefully I will get to see the installation of the angel statues on them. That probably won’t be for a couple of weeks, so I will post pictures of it when I can.
