Doing Your Best Doesn’t Always Help

Some people are impressed by surgeons. Some people are impressed by gymnasts. I am impressed by painters.

I don’t mean all painters. Painting a picture is easy. Painting a house is easy. People who can do these things are a dime a dozen. I’m impressed by people who can paint THINGS. Even a mailbox is hard to paint well. How people manage to paint cars and motorcycles is beyond me.

I made myself a nice tool arm rack for my belt grinder. I created it to fit on the side of a Harbor Freight tool chest. It wasn’t hard. Just cutting, welding, and grinding. Then I tried to paint it. What a nightmare.

I figured I would use Rust-Oleum farm implement paint in John Deere green. Truck bed paint is tougher, but it’s always black or a color which is repulsive. I got myself a can of primer and a can of paint, and I figured I was on my way.

First problem: it rains here every day now. Torrential rain. It starts in the afternoon and goes on for hours. Sometimes it starts again at night. I don’t have a shed where I can hang things to paint them, and painting them in the shop is a problem, so I ordinarily hang them from a limb of a magnolia tree I plan to cut down. Finding a time to hang this project was difficult. Seemed like every time I went outside, it started raining.

I finally got it primed, and I found a way to paint it in the shop. When I painted it, the paint was rough. This was a new problem. I have gotten better results with earlier projects.

It turned out to be a couple of things. First, spray paint is harder to apply smoothly than brush paint, which I have used in the past. Second, the primer I picked was a high-build primer. I thought it would cover imperfections. Instead, it provided imperfections of its own in the form of a sandy surface.

I took an angle grinder and removed all the paint and primer. I chose a new primer and started over. By this time, I had lost days.

I didn’t take chances. I sanded the new primer before spraying, and then I added the paint. The result was adequate. It could really use more sanding, but it will do, and I can always wet-sand the paint and add another coat.

I planned to put a sheet of 3/4″ plywood on top of the cart to distribute the weight of the grinders and give me something to screw them to. Yesterday I made the sheet. I cut, sanded, and primed it. I used a roller to prime it.

Before I could prime it, I had to deal with the primer that shot all over the table saw, the project, my drill, my apron, the floor, and me, among other things.

I had obtained a tool for stirring paint. It goes in a drill. I lowered it into the can and used the low gear to stir. No problem. Very controllable. I figured it was so easy, I could go ahead and use the high gear.

When I changed gears and pulled the trigger, half of the paint went up, out of the can for good, and onto everything around it. It happened instantly. No possibility of controlling it.

An hour later, after learning that turpentine is the only really good thing to use to clean up spilled latex paint, I took my 6″ mini roller and painted both sides of the plywood.

Then the bugs took notice.

A june bug flew in from my left, did a spiral, and corkscrewed into the fresh primer, where it lay kicking its legs. A swarm of little flies showed up shortly thereafter.

I fixed things by putting a fan next to the plywood to prevent bugs from landing.

Today I got another 6″ roller cover. Cleaning roller covers isn’t really possible. You can squeeze enough paint out to keep them usable for a couple of days, but you will never be able to clean a roller cover to the point where you can use it to paint a new color. I picked Home Depot’s best cover, supposedly. I didn’t want to take chances.

I stirred the paint successfully and started applying it. Then I saw a big cluster of fibers stuck to the board. I thought it fell from somewhere, but I was wrong. It came from the roller. All over the board, there were little hairs that came from my expensive “professional” roller cover.

Now the board is drying. It has one coat of paint on one side, and that coat has fibers in it. I can’t do anything to it until tomorrow, when I hope I can sand it and make the fibers vanish without destroying the primer and paint.

I can’t believe Home Depot sells this terrible product. It is also extremely irritating to try to do everything right and then be let down by a product which is not merely worthless but destructive. It’s bad enough when a product doesn’t work. When it destroys other things and ruins hours or days of work, it’s a catastrophic product.

It should take two days to paint a board well. I figure I am looking at 4, minimum. Sand and paint tomorrow. Paint the day after. Paint again the day after that.

Other than that, the project is going well. I attached the rack I made to the cart, and it fits perfectly. It will hold 4 tool arms very well. There is a holder for a 5th arm, but it has limited potential because the enclosure for the VFD is under it and prevents the holder from allowing a long arm to slide the whole way in. I put the holder in anyway because I may get a new VFD some day, and the holder might conceivably have a use for a shorter arm.

Adding the 5th holder at this point was easy. Adding it later would have required removing paint, welding, grinding, painting again…

If I get a different VFD that doesn’t require a platform, I’ll still need to do some of these things, but it will be a much simpler job.

After all this, I have to put my table saw on wheels. The base I have on it now is an add-on from Amazon or somewhere, and it’s about 1% as good as one I could make myself. I’ll go back to truck bed coating. It’s very easy to apply.

I’m wondering if I should keep my little Rockwell 1×42 grinder. It’s a nice tool, but I have a 2-HP motor and a spare VFD sitting around. That’s maybe $1000 worth of hardware. It’s the parts of a grinder that make up most of the cost. I could probably make the rest for $100. Two pulleys, a spring, and a body made from a small amount of welded tubing or plate. Couple of other things. A cord.

I could make a second 2×72 grinder that rotates so the belt is horizontal. Or I could just make a grinder which is fixed in a horizontal position. There is no reason to have a rotating grinder when you have them in two orientations.

At least I don’t think there is.

If you have two grinders, you can put different belts on them so you can go back and forth when you’re doing different jobs.

Anyway, I hope to see this project finished this week.