Spray booth

Rat Rod Bikes Bicycle Forum

Help Support Rat Rod Bikes Bicycle Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Joined
Sep 17, 2013
Messages
4,196
Reaction score
9,069
Location
The middle of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan
Rating - 100%
3   0   0
Tarp floor, ten foot square wood roof frame, 10 foot conduit pipes anchored into the ground and into a hole drilled into wood blocks, air filter intake on top and exahust blower to remove overspray that makes the
20200824_094427.jpg
frame paint bumpy.
20200824_094315.jpg
20200824_094321.jpg
20200824_094343.jpg
 
Last edited:
Dood! It looks you have as much work into that booth as I put into a build (or two!)

Soooooo beats my "booth" which is just holding a set of forks up in the air by the thread end!
It’s not that hard or takes long to make. I used mostly stuff I had on hand. I had to buy the filter and one conduit. The bike frame is stuck on a shorter piece of conduit through the head tube. Gravity keeps it in place. The conduit that holds the frame is stuck into a cast iron yard umbrella stand. It’s a pretty big booth but you can walk all around the frame when spraying without having to worry about touching the frame. I think with Velcro instead of staples that you could make one that collapses down for storage once the poles are pulled out of the wood blocks. Then again, staples are super easy and heavy plastic sheeting, like for a crawl space dirt floor, is pretty cheap for a box big enough for a paint booth lifetime supply. Flat rocks hold the clear plastic to the floor plastic tarp. A water spray down was used after the primer coats and allowed to dry until the next day. That got rid of the primer dust. It withstood two rain storms so far. One just needed the rain puddle removed from the roof and the other a little more repair. It’s outside for the light and on the south side of our garage as all our strong winds are from the north.
image.jpg
 
Last edited:
Nice, that sure beats my urban paint booth of two trash cans in the alley, a piece of superstrut, and some homemade part hooks. :D

index.php
 
Nice, that sure beats my urban paint booth of two trash cans in the alley, a piece of superstrut, and some homemade part hooks. :D

index.php
So far it’s amazingly smooth, with three 2k primer coats and one base coat. Each coat was wet sanded with 800 grit between coats. This is a real ambitious project as the next step will be with a slight blush pearl powder added to the paint. Then clear. All two part automotive paint. The paint was purchased on line as a complete kit for doing a motorcycle. It contained everything, base coat, hardener, thinner, filters, mixing cups, stir sticks. its thrifty as you aren’t purchasing the usual large amounts.
 
Last edited:
Very cool
 
The exhaust fan keeps the booth free of atomized paint spray. I think it’s destroyed my blower. Another $2.00 filter before it would have been a good idea. It works fantastic to keep the booth mist free. My wife is not happy that I painted her flowers.
image.jpg
image.jpg
 
Last edited:
Pretty easy and inexpensive to build. The hardest part was sitting around in my rocker for a few days trying to figure out how a smart guy would do it. I finally remembered that I once made a collapsable ice shanty with conduit poles into wood blocks and plastic tarps. It was mounted on skis so the whole works clamped into my roof ski rack on my 1980 Subaru. This is much, much bigger and taller, but the same basic design. Now you can buy colapsable ones. I was ahead of the curve.
 
Can't see details clearly in this pic. Umbrella base for the steerer, supported in the rear with wire? Is there anything on that pole supporting the front? Anything else I'm missing?
There is no support. The weight of the back of the frame keeps the whole frame in place. Its kinda wedged in there naturally. The scrap conduit that the frame head tube through is 3/4 inch. The ten foot conduit for the four wall corners are 3/4 inch. I used string and old junk scrap steel rods for tent poles. The important thing is to make the booth big enough so you can walk all around it and high enough that you can get under and on top of the frame. The other important things are to put it where there is a lot of light and to have good ventilation. A shop vacuum wasn’t enough. A leaf blower would also probably work. Good ventilation will suck the sides in a little but there will be no paint spray mist in the tent. I somehow said the conduit poles were 8 feet long. That’s wrong and I knew it but somehow put it down wrong. The poles are 10 feet high.
 
Last edited:
I’ve come up with an improved plan for a similar booth. I would use four short lengths of 4 inch PVC pipe. I would use 4 pieces of steel conduit that the 10 foot 3/4 inch conduit would fit into. Take the four inch pvc and put them in the ground and put the short conduit pieces inside and put cement around and in the pvc. The short length of conduit would have to stick above the buried pvc because it will have a cotter pin in it to keep the 10 foot poles in place. A pvc cap at ground level would cover the pipes when the booth isn’t erected. I could mow right over it. The tops of the 10 foot conduit will have a larger diameter threaded rod or pipe welded on it. The roof will be made of 1 x 6 boards overlapped at the corners with a one inch hole for the 10 foot conduit. A strap X is from corner to corner on the roof frame. To erect it the four conduit poles are placed through each corner of the roof and into the ground pipes. A cotter pin inserted to keep the poles from lifting out of the ground. The roof is then lifted with a pulley and rope or ratcheting tie down from a sky hook. Probably a push assist with a board from the inside would be required to slide the roof up. The larger than the conduit bolt could be slid up and threaded on to keep the roof from coming down. A cotter pin would also probably work. This way you wouldn’t need a ladder so much to put it up. Easy up and down for storage.
image.jpg
 
Nice, that sure beats my urban paint booth of two trash cans in the alley, a piece of superstrut, and some homemade part hooks. :D

index.php
I have done a similar non booth a lot. My problem was that the force of the spray made the parts move and spin. I got an an uneven coat with a lot of spray where I didn’t want it. The way my frame is attached to the conduit pole through the head tube eliminates movement when sprayed. I think for a good job the parts have to be solidly fixed, but also so you can get at all surfaces. That could take some thinking for fenders and chain guards. I used a LVLP top feed gun because they have a small paint pattern so you can get into tight places with minimum over spray and atomized spray mist in the booth is minimized, but your finish will be rough without strong ventilation. This type of gun is useless for autos or furniture. It’s much better than an air brush, a little bigger pattern and you can hold more paint in the gun than with an airbrush. I also used an oil and water filter at the compressor tank outlet. That turned out to be the right thing to do as a ton of water was removed from the compressed air.
 
It rained from 5 am to 2 pm today, humidity 95% and 65 F. A rebuild of the destroyed spray shack was required but a ceramic heater made the inside dry and toasty warm in no time. Was able to spray despite the temp and humidity. The heater was turned off while spraying.
3FC8AAA6-5FD4-420E-883A-09DA9AD5609C.jpeg
321C06DF-3C01-44D8-BB69-5184A4AEFD15.jpeg
BCF97F04-ECD7-4B11-B792-70EC3445F3B4.jpeg
 

Latest posts

Back
Top