Friday, December 31, 2010

A Spray-Painting Turntable

I know it's ugly as sin, but it's a very helpful little piece of gear for spray-painting.



In a previous life, it was the base of a two-level lazy Susan spice rack for a kitchen cabinet. It eventually got fired from that job, so I snagged it and put it to work as a spray painting assistant.

It has the virtue of being very free-turning; it doesn't fight me at all as I reorient whatever I'm painting on it.

Here's a photo of a barbeque part I've placed on it for repainting. (The factory's paint job left a bit to be desired.)

That primer coat was a breeze. The turntable makes it easy to adjust an item's position any which way for spray painting it uniformly.

- - -

Many items to be spray painted can be devilishly awkward to support. The accessory pictured below has proven very useful for such things.

I cut a disk from particleboard to just fit the turntable, and attached a Record No. 0 (2 1/2") mechanic's vise to it; all sorts of things become possible.

There's always some way to arrange to support a thing to be painted, and the vise is heavy enough that it can hold some very unbalanced items without being tippy. Some things, like the faucet shell pictured below, make it easy.

The faucet shell has a couple of 10-24 female-threaded bosses in it for securing the innards. So, a bit of threaded rod and a locknut were all that was needed here.

Tubular items, like a handlebar from a piece of yard gear, lend themselves to this sort of treatment.

In actual use, I cover the vise with newspaper to spare it the indignity of catching the spray fallout. Note the hole in the disc just in front of the vise's handle. That's for hanging the thing on a nail from a joist when it's not in use.

It's a versatile piece of gear that's not at all difficult to make.

# # #


# # #

No comments:

Post a Comment