richbl

Hello all,

I'm in the process of door painting. I have 12 interior doors that need to be painted. They are solid-core wood (hemlock/spruce veneer), and have been primed (Bulls Eye 1-2-3) and prepped.

I'm using a Wagner Paint Crew paint sprayer.

I've built a paint booth and I have 2x4s screwed to the top and bottom of the doors for support on two horses, with a single lag bolt in top 2x4 to make it easier for me to pivot the door in order to flip it over.

These doors lay flat (horizontally) in the paint booth.

Which gets to my problem. I can paint the two faces of a door with no problems. The results are quite exceptional: a nice clean finish with no imperfections whatsoever.

However, the edges of the doors are a different story. I will alternate between either too much paint accumulation along the door edge, which results in runs and sags. Or, with too little paint, I get a stippled, orange-peel texturing. All of this, the result of the door edges being vertical to the ground while the door faces are horizontal.

So, my question is this: how can I effectively spray paint all sides of a door without risking paint runs and sags, or the orange-peel texture?

It seems that I'm walking a very fine line between too little paint and too much paint. And given that I'm painting a white acrylic latex on a white-primed door, it's very difficult to gauge how much paint is "just right."

I've thought about painting edges separately (doors rotated in the booth so the edges are horizontal), then rotating the doors again painting the door faces after the edges have dried. But, I'd guess that over-spray would contaminate the newly-painted area, and I'd be no better off in the end.

I'm convinced that there's got to be a better, more consistent, and more forgiving, approach here, and I'm just not seeing it.

Oddly, I didn't run into this issue when priming the doors initially, so my guess is that the paint itself might have something to do with it. Are there such things are paint "thickeners" or additives that will force latex paint to dry much faster (before runs/sags develop)?

Anyone else out there who have run into this situation? Any tips?

Thanks much.

sirwired

I'd just paint the edges with a brush. I could see trying to spray the edges being pretty tough.

SirWired

Nestor_Kelebay

Is it possible to get a smaller nozzle for your spray painter so that less paint comes out, thereby giving you more control over how much paint you put on?

Otherwise, I'd say to just paint the door edges separately with a brush or roller first, then paint the fronts and backs.