Had a very productive weekend!
Finished setting up the spray booth, sealed in the blower unit for exhaust and put a furnace filter on the other side of the room as the intake, the combo worked very well!
It's been very humid around here lately so my compressor picks up a lot of moisture, I have 2 water separators but I was worried moisture might still make it to the spray gun, so I bought a new hose just for using with the spray gun, and I put a desiccant filter on the inlet to the new hose, and one right up at the spray gun. All the filtering and hose length created quite a pressure drop, when adjusting the gun to 28 psi the regulator at the compressor needed to be around 70psi! Either way the air setup worked great!
Once all the equipment was setup I then performed the Awlgrip compatibility test, it passed! So in the future if anyone is questioning putting Awlgrip 545 over totalBoat totalProtect I can say yes it is no problem! (As long as it was applied correctly)
After the test I wiped the hull clean first with compressed air and a lint free cotton rag, then with Awlprep T0170 and 2 rags. I started with Awlprep T0008 but found that it was too difficult to fully wet the surface because it would evaporate faster than I was able to wipe it off with the second rag...
After that I masked of the boat and started in to mixing. Since Awlgrip 545 has an induction time of 15 minutes, I would spray the first batch at the same time my dad would start mixing the second, that way I can continually spray. I was surprised at how thin the mix was without the reducer and I ended up spraying it without it using a 1.4mm tip. It laid it on very well. I was impressed, the gun I bought at a garage sale for $20, turns out it's a devilbiss Starting Line gun, which is there cheap one, still it's better than my other harbor freight units.
I was very happy with the outcome though, I did have one run on the port side, but it will be easily sanded out. Hoping to get the sanding done next week and prep for topcoat soon.
-Andrew
