re: looking for finish sprayer/gun advice

To back up others, the Fuji’s seem to get good reviews everywhere. The highest reviews seem to be for Apollos, but they, of course, come with a higher tag.

After you use a true HVLP, as opposed to any conversion, you’ll be sold on them. The differences are huge:

1) You don’t have to lug around compressor. It’s more like lugging around a vacuum.

2) You have no moist air problems. That is, moisture does not condense in the lines, as with siphon units or conversion units.

3) They shoot air at around eight to ten pounds, so there is little bounce back, compared to units that require around forty-five pounds or airless units that bounce material at about twenty-five hundred pounds.

4) Though air pressure is low, volume is high. Mine runs around eight CFM at nine pounds. To give you an idea of what this means, I actually use mine to run a small mud gun for texturing.

When shooting latex, I thin a quart with only about two table spoons of water (“eyeballed”) and can tackle a stair or deck railing in about a fifth, or less the time a brush and roller would require.

When I switch needles and go to lacquer, I thin more carefully and get the finish you’d expect on a nice car.

The guns on the good units (Cap Spray, Fuji, Apollo (not familiar with Earlex) are remarkable.