Equipment for Gelcoat spraying?

[Johan Linder]

I need some gelcoat spraying equipment to apply gelcoat on plug, tooling gelcoat for mould, and finally for building kayak hulls in the finished moulds.

I have heard of people using ~200$ electric sprayguns for this job, especially when the area is limited to 2-3m2. These operate at high pressures (200bar) and can handle high viscosity paints (up to 160 DIN #4 seconds).

Here is an example:
http://www.krebs-ag.com/English/Products/K_45_E.html

Does anyone have any experience with this type of equipment for gelcoat application?
Other recommendations?

Thanks for any help on this!
Best regards, Johan Linder, Sweden

[tja]

Hello Johen, Go on a search engine like google and type in gelcoat cup gun. You'll find a hand held gun that works off compressed air. They use paper one quart cups. These work well for small jobs as you discribed. To apply tooling gel to your plug use a conventional paint spray gun thinning down the gelcoat with enther styrene or mek. Don't mistaken mek with mekp . Hope this helps, Tom.

[Buckle]

I work for a Major International Boat Building in the UK. Being a large company, H&S issues are hot. I'm not one for H&S being a DIY person but the VOC when gelling a large surface area will be high. If your using an electrical item, make sure the unit is classified as sealed. If not you could have an explosion on your hands as Styrene is explosive. Air tools are far safer.

Dont want to be been nagging, but just dont want to see you blow your garage up and wreck your rabbit.

We had a fire not to long ago. The resultant was one person dieing with 90 odd percent burns owing to a careless mistake.

Buckle

[Herman]

For simple gelcoat spraying, I have seen many solutions.

-simple spraygun. Just pour in the catalised gelcoat, and give it a go (use gelcoat suitable for spraying)

-the quart-cup spray gun mentioned above. Available at www.esmfg.com (hope the URL is right, company is ES manufacturing). Works practically the same as a normal paint gun, but is much easier to clean.

-the large array of more professional equipment, which mix the gelcoat and produce less VOC's when spraying.

Try and build up a sufficiently thick layer of gelcoat, or it might be attacked by the following resin.