Mike:
At our local HF, they actually had a guy that had used couple of the paint guns, but more important, he is in charge of returns for painting items as well as a few others, but he considers painting his baby.
As a sidebar, I have been buying stuff there like drop cloths, hammers, air nailer hose, fittings, etc. for years and now the store has never been cleaner, the people never more friendly, and the store in altogether better shape. Maybe they are working on their image.
As for your assessment, you were right on with this young guy at the store. He pronounced the first gun "iffy", said they had taken a few back, but was well aware of you concerns on the action. He felt like it would be wise to look at several, take one home to try it out, then bring it back if I didn't like it. Not too encouraging. I feel like if that gun has that kind of feel to it (out of three I tried, all but one had rough, catching triggers) I won't want to rely on a tool to take out to the job that has such poor QC in manufacturing.
The second gun, was actually a really nice piece of equipment. Double reinforced bottom on the cup, really nice smooth action, and he said they just don't get them back. They sell lot of them to guys that use them to shoot primer in welding shops and to those that use them for "shop only" guns for heavier finishes. He was really pleased with this one. Sadly, no way I could fit it into my portability requirements. On the bright side though, he said that he will probably have that one on sale in the next 2 -3 weeks and if they follow their sale patterns, it will probably be about $15. On the list for a shop gun.
The ABS gun had the smoothest action, and really looked like an expensive gun. The action was silky smooth, and the fit and finish was well beyond some of their other stuff. Problems was, in the guns I looked at (they were all dark blue plastic, so a black crack was easy to see) the cracks. If you look at the ad pic, they were cracked at the base of the hook, to the lower right of the pivot pen on the trigger. This is the weak point of the casting but when I pulled the trigger, I could see the flex, even on the ones that weren't already cracked.
But, but, but... I could use some sage advice here...
They had a really nice gun that was in their $35 dollar range that they are discontinuing. It is on sale for 1/2 price, about $16. It was a large, solid, polished affair with a quart cup gun. It was set up so that my little compressor (with the afore mentioned reserve tank) could push it. It only needed about 4 cfm at 50 lbs, so I should be fine there. Great feel to the packings, well built,,, so why are they closing them out?
It has a .8 mm nozzle! Now I understand why they are so low on the cfm requirements, they don't need much because they don't throw much material, and certainly not thick material. I know I can thin anything to the point where it can be shot, but I have to be careful not to exceed the manufacturer's guidleines for thinning, and I also don't have the time (contrary to popular belief, remodeling is very competitive) to build coat after coat to get the 2 or 3 thousandths required by different manufacturers for a warrantable end product.
With a .8 mm nozzle, would I be able to spray my thick oil based stuff? My little Binks 5 knockoff shoots the urethane oil based coatings I like with only about a tablespoon of thinner in 16 oz. So it isn't really thinned much to me, but it does shoot perfectly as opposed to unthinned. The coatings guy that sells this stuff gave me the formula.
So the gun looks great, but I am worried about the .8 mm nozzle. I know this smaller size is something that is usually employed to shoot lacquers and well thinned build coat finishes.
I know what really has me going about the gun is the ability to use my compressor. Ideally, I would go the client's house, tear out and hang their new door. Then I would put away the nail guns, attach my filters, turn down the compressor and start mixing paint. All from the same machine. Now my little Binks knockoff works great for 36" doors. But as you know, the gist of the problem now is constant refilling for larger projects. I am afraid that when I want to spray larger projects, this will not only have the feature of being inconvenient, but could lead to an irregularity in the finish. To finish one large set of the burglar bars on the house that got all this going for me, I have to refill the little gun 4 times!
BTW, do you have any idea what the nozzle size would be on the little Binks 5 knockoff I have could be? I am wondering that as a trim gun if it might not be somewhere in the .8 range and I just don't know it. I am wondering if it is but cannot find any info on the gun nozzle size anywhere. If that were the case I would run down and buy that bigger .8 nozzled gun and let this go for a while.
Well, the good news about HF is this.
When I spent my hour down there looking at guns, I spied a few replacement cups for the larger guns. Nothing larger for the little B5, but I looked. But says the guy, you might check in the back on their newly designed "Clearance" isle. I went back there, and there were two nicely polished, unused teflon lined cups, but they were 3/8" NPT at the connection, not 1/4".
However, HF is now discontinuing all AMFLO products, so all of them were right over the cups. So... I picked up the B5 from the front of the store and took it back where I was, and fitted a brass female coupler to the bottom of the head after taking off the tank top/siphon assembly. Then I put a 1/4 to 3/8 inch male coupler and screwed the the clearance tank onto it. Success! The tank was $5, the fittings were a buck, and I think I now have a nice bandaid.
It is feels little clumsy in the hand (full of paint should really magnify this >a lot