The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Paint and Body Shop Crappy Harbor Freight paint guns!

Decided to take the plunge & paint my truck. Used Rustoleum gloss black and the the shine is awesome. But I do have issues, not with the paint itself, but with the cheap@$#% Harbor Freight gun. I never could get the paint flow quite right. Halfway through the first side, the *%$#)% fell apart! Literally!! The flow set screw came flying of the back of the gun! I had no Idea where the darned thing went so I made a mad dash back to the store to get a new one. I thought that I'd just buy the the $15 gun and just get the set screw rather than buying another $40 one because they looked just alike..... NOT!! Got home and they were totally different! Didn't want to drive back to the store so I figured I may as well try it. It was also at this point that I realized that I'd also forgot to use the water filter I'd bought the first time. Man what a lethal combination!!! The gun leaked paint like a sieve and the filter leaked water and ruined my hard work. The paint it self looks AWESOME, if you don't look at the obvious air bubbles and the globs of dripped paint!!! (which also ruined the garage floor!!) Gonna sand down the bad spots ans do it again, this time with a better gun. Went to Home Depot today and found a much better one. Will keep you posted on the progress!
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Yeah, I hear ya, bought one of those,lived that, never again, when it comes to painting, buy the good gun. Good guns aren't really all that expensive anymore in comparison either. My .02

Steve

We go to HF to save money. We hope that the item, made in China, will be worth $40. We hope that it won't fall apart. We check it out before we start to be sure everything is tight. We test paint something. We don't always get our money's worth.. or do we? The formula for HF is that 81% of the items are OK, factored by the fact that we don't know which ones they are.

Now I've had just the opposite experience with the HF paint guns. I've got an older
DeVilbiss MBC, an older Binks industrial gun, a Binks touch up gun, a Sata pressure gun
and a new set of three DeVilbiss Starting line guns. Throw in a couple of old Sears &
Roebuck guns I picked up along the way, talk about junk.
A few years back I tried a couple of the HF HVLP guns when they were on sale, I mean
how can you go wrong for the price. I've found them to be one of the few items that HF
sells that work as they should. I've used the full size HVLP gun and their touch up guns
to spray paint and primer and found them to do a surprisingly good job. My biggest
complaint is the lack of tip choices for them. I've never needed parts for them, which I'm
sure are impossible to find, but at the cost of the guns you might as well just pitch them if
you need a part.
Fact of the matter is I've grabbed the HF guns more than the others the last few years and
haven't had any problems with them.
http://www.pbase.com/dennygraham/image/138713127
Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL

I've spent as much time taking things back to HF as I have buying them. They are good with their return policy though.

We use the cheap HF "HVLP" guns for primer and treat them as throw-aways (or for spare parts). There are two styles of the cheapest guns and the parts are not all interchangeable. We have bought 4 for the two vehicles we are working on - two are still working (not bad for $40).

We used to get them at $9.99 on sale.

For final coats we will again use an 3M/Accuspray HVLP turbine system.

I used the touch up gun 46719

I was able to use it with the little pancake nail compressor I have .

Used it on the truck paint (Sherwin williams) and with rustoleum on the inner fenders.
It worked surprisingly well.

I did thin the rustoleum a little more than what's listed on the can. But onced thinned it sprayed nice.

Good luck and let us know how the home depot model works out.

Yeah... I want a video of that step.
Your screwed.
Rustoleum won't sand for another 6 months if your lucky.
Get a gal of lacquer thinner and take it all off with rags and start over.

(The video would make a great awareness raising tool for all the future rustoleum painters out there looking to save money and spend time )

To the contrary, I had no problems with it at all. Wet sanded it yesterday without much difficulty. My complaint was with my choice of guns, not the paint.

What 'type' (acry /oil) of rustoleum was it?
Last time I used some it gummed up the paper bad till it finaly cured. Good to hear it was ok so soon.

I usually thin Rustoleum 30% by volume for spraying, run it through a paint filter and load the spray gun. Usually spray a test piece to make adjustment and go..... Knats are usually the worst problem......

John

Oil based, the professional series.

set aside the gun falling apart, bad luck. I have used these guns for years and had no problems. One problem may have been that the paint was too thick, you might want to thin it 20-30% so it flows better. FYI