Just thought I’d post some photos of a DIY spray booth I’ve nearly finished. I spent lots of time looking at photos of similar booths online, in particular while trying to figure out how to mount the Dayton blower to the back of the cabinet. I settled on mounting the blower to a piece of galvanized sheet metal and then screwing that whole assembly to some furring strips on the back of the cabinet. The main trick is supporting the weight of the blower from underneath–you’ll see I did that with a stack of 1x4 blocks centered under the fan motor. It will all vent directly out the back with very little ducting via a window at the same level as the booth.
Materials-wise: I used a 36" wide bathroom sink base cabinet harvested from a salvage shop ($25); 2’x3’ sheet of galvanized steel ($20); a piece of lexan on the top in the sink opening ($20); 3/4" plywood for the back, and 1x2s and 1x4s for the furring (all on hand); 6" ducting collar and 6" to 4" reducer ($15-ish?); and of course the blower, which I got new on fleabay for $120 (Dayton model 1TDT2, 549cfm, 1640rpm). Wiring, plugs, switches etc., all stuff I had on hand, plus I’ll need to put a light over it. So basically a $200 project, whereas the large Pace booth I might otherwise have bought is $500. The main thing is that I had no intention of skimping on the blower.
ebay seller a1locator, actually the price was 129–it was missing the original box, I had been seeing that blower for $155-165. I was too impatient to wait for a used one to pop up. Tested the flow today, it does pretty well. There’s a brand called Rotom that makes “replacement blowers” for various Dayton models, but I read some pretty iffy reviews of those. I’d stick with the Dayton ones if you can.
Jim - Consider a 5 1/2" clamp-on work light for 6 bucks at Home Depot. Then you can position it anywhere you want, it’ll be out of the line of fire, and you can use it on other projects around the house. And if you line the inside with cheap aluminum kitchen foil you’ll greatly enhance the light in there, and keep your booth lookin’ spiffy. I spray 2-3 times a week and have never had to replace the foil in two years. Use something else to test the spray, not the side walls.
Paul, thanks for the foil tip, I had no idea, I will definitely try that. When I used to spray fairly often (I used a friend’s booth), we rigged up a piece of cardboard on a spindle stuck in a block of wood to take preliminary passes with the brush before painting for real. And the clip-on lights are in the works, I’ve got a couple we’ve used to raise chicks but I will also put some flourescent tubing up top for overall light. We also used to put a heat lamp in one of the clip-on lights to assist with drying models and baking the paint after airbrushing. I’ll probably do that again.
at some point I will need some advice about paints and paint brands–my entire spraying experience is rooted back in the Floquil era . . . I don’t see much of that in hobby shops anymore. The first acrylic subsitutes were pretty bad (I vaguely remember some abomination called “accu-paint”?) but I understand they’ve gotten better. Finding weathering colors and things like brick and rust are high on my list if anyone’s got some recommendations.
One more - with a small eye-screw on each side, you can rig a “clothesline” across the inside made from a wire clothes hanger and hang a building wall on it with small office supply binder clips attached to those little tabs you get on the edge of a wall. If you run the ‘clothesline’ through just one of the thumb handles on the clip, you can turn the wall nearly 180 and paint both sides in the same session.
that’s great, I’ll have to try that as well. I used to put together Magnuson resin kits, and for those we found out it was best to assemble the model first and paint afterwards. But with plastic kits I think your method is better than sticking them on tape and waiting for one side to dry before doing the other side.
Jimster - Shudda mentioned another good hanger. I have a half dozen wire spring type shower curtain hooks/rings that some people use for key rings on my ‘clothesline’ that I can hook through a building window or doorway. Some combination of that thing and the binder clip enables getting at any side of anything to shorten up the project of getting something painted.
OK, you’ve done a great job of engineering that booth. I’ll leave ya alone now.
thanks Paul, that’s another great idea, and I will try this one as well. I did do some searching here and online and have found some color matching info for the “Floquil to something else” conversion, one thread here on MR:
Accupaint wasn’t an acrylic, and was, in my experience, one of the nicer brands to use, as was their line of decals.
Paint and striping from Accucal, while the roadname is from a Champ alphabet set:
For painting rolling stock, locomotives, or small structures, I have a pile of assorted small lumber (modified 1"x1", 1"x2", etc.) which I use as slip-in handles, while larger structures that won’t fit in the booth are done outdoors. For weathering, I prefer to hand-hold the model and/or roll it (or run it if it’s a locomotive) on an old Bowser turntable bridge - disposable nitrile gloves work well for this, even with lacquer-based paints.
Wayne, that’s a beautiful model–I misspoke on paint brand, I believe it was actually Badger’s Accu Flex, which when it first came out had problems coagulating in the bottle. It was weird stuff, I never got it to work and then went on my vacation from the hobby for 20 years.
I like the idea of using the nitrile gloves to hold stuff for light spraying, I’ll have to get a box.
I use the more expensive pleated filters, and you are right that they “clog” faster. But I suppose the other way to look at it is they trap more stuff that would otherwise pass through and either deposit on the fan or get blown to the outside to deposit on the side of your house or on your car.
another good point and makes me think I’ll try both. I did a search to figure out where I had read that about pleated filters and it led me right back here to this thread:
And one person there mentioned using the large mesh sheet as a prefilter in front of a pleated filter. So I’m thinking that may be the ultimate solution.
Thanks for your kind words, Jim. [:D]
And I do agree with you concerning Badger’s original Accu Flex - absolutely terrible for coagulating, whether in an airbrush or on a paint brush.
As for filters for a paint booth, I used regular fibreglass filters meant for furnaces - my homemade booth takes 1/2 of an 11"x20" filter (no longer available, so I’ll need to modify the holder to accept another size when my supply runs out). I’d strongly advise against pleated paper filters - they’ll quickly become clogged and are too expensive to be as readily replaceable as the fibreglass ones. The main purpose of the filter is to keep paint particles out of the exhaust air, and the fibreglass filters do an adequate job at a reasonable cost, allowing you to change them often. My fan, an in-line one from an old air hockey game, has been in service for over 30 years without issue, and there’s no staining at all on the garage wall where the exhaust outlet is located.
My spray booth was originally in a small room in my garage (where it could be heated in the winter) and it worked well. When we moved into a new house with no garage, I put it in a small room in my basement workshop. While it still worked okay, the tightness of a new house did affect its performance, as it laboured to draw “make-up” air as painting continued.
I eventually moved it to an acquired garage, again in a small room built only for airbrushing. One thing which greatly improved booth performance was to include a closeable vent to allow fresh air into the room. (It’s closeable to keep out both dirt and critters, as the “garage” is a converted 125 year old house, and not especially “tight”.) In winter, I pre-heat the room using a portable electric heater, then paint with the vent open. The compressor I use is a rotary-type, which doesn’t use a tank, so it runs continuously during painting operations, which may last 3
thanks Wayne for the advice. Got everything set up this morning and played with it a bit after I making a run to Napa for some male-male fittings for my air hose connections (needed one for the water trap and I want to put a second regulator at the booth).
I can already see where the acrylics might be a bit of a pain in terms of cleanup, so I’ll play with the enamels to see which I like working with better. I lost a nice double action brush in a move at some point (or left it behind at the club I used to belong to is more likely), so right now just have a single action, but that’s okay while I’m testing everything out. Need to pick up some foil to try the foil lining trick.
Made one mistake, put an incandescent clamp-on light on TOP of the booth (on the Lexan) and started to melt the Lexan . . . [:$] Won’t make that mistake again. Unfortunately the flourescent tube I have on there doesn’t throw enough light. And I really didn’t like the clamp-on fixture on the side of the booth, just too big and gets in the way. I’ll have to frame some sort of box above but high enough to not melt the Lexan.
Now to start playing with some of my junky old Athearn cars for practice.
I may go back and give the LEDs another look, there’s not much framing on the top of the booth to attach the puck style lights too, but an LED strip or three along the front and side edges might do the trick. I like the light from the 150 watt incandescent, but it does throw a lot of heat.
BEFORE: spray booth base cabinet open
spray booth fan mounted to galvanized sheet
spray booth back framed, ready for blower
