Priming and hand painting MDF??

[ondablade]

I need to seal and paint the MDF blower housing for my Pentz dust system. It's been discussed before, but a search didn't seem to bring up quite what I wanted.

Can anybody recommend a primer and a paint that will brush on to give a fairly decent satin finish? Preferably quick drying, giving good coverage and widely available. Two pack of some sort might be a good idea to avoid marking any soft bits when handling fairly soon afterwards...

Thank you

 

[petermillard]

I use an acrylic primer/undercoat - Dulux, Johnson, Leyland, Wickes, they pretty much all seem to give the same results. Two or three coats on any cut edges and a good rub down in between. For a topcoat I've used Dulux diamond eggshell - water-based quick drying eggshell. Hard wearing, though I've had mixed results on large flat surfaces (e.g. door sized) where I can't always get a consistent finish. I usually apply with a 4" foam roller and blend it out with a soft brush, but on occasions it's dried too fast for the brush to do much, hence the patchy finish.

Be interested to see what anyone else uses for hand painting; oil-based eggshells give a great finish, but can take forever to dry...

Cheers, Pete.

 

[Karl]

I use an acrylic primer/undercoat - Dulux, Johnson, Leyland, Wickes, they pretty much all seem to give the same results. Two or three coats on any cut edges and a good rub down in between. For a topcoat I've used Dulux diamond eggshell - water-based quick drying eggshell. Hard wearing, though I've had mixed results on large flat surfaces (e.g. door sized) where I can't always get a consistent finish. I usually apply with a 4" foam roller and blend it out with a soft brush, but on occasions it's dried too fast for the brush to do much, hence the patchy finish.

Be interested to see what anyone else uses for hand painting; oil-based eggshells give a great finish, but can take forever to dry...

Cheers, Pete.

That's the method I use too - although I tend to use normal eggshell. I've never used the diamond stuff, but was planning on using it on my latest kitchen build. Will get a tester and try it out on one of the panels.

Cheers

Karl

 

[Ateallthepies]

To get a consistent hand applied finish you will need to use an oil based finish over the MDF acrylic primer.

I have just been on a job where the client had a load of wardrobes built in and the decorator applied two coats of Acrylic MDF primer, two coats of oil based undercoat and two coats of oil based gloss(one would do but the client wanted two). Sounds a lot of coats but use too few and run the risk of a poor finish and it grinning through.

This was done with a 4 inch foam roller and the result was very good with no roller marks or tram lines. The only problem is trying to keep the dust down with the oil based finishes until it hardens.


Steve.

 

[Oryxdesign]

If it doesn't have to be coloured you could use Rustins plastic floor coating which dries quickly and hard.

 

[ondablade]

Thanks guys, some good possibilities there. I'd forgotten about Rustins plastic coating, I should even have some on the shelf. Maybe it can be pigmented?

I can probably risk some imperfections since oil based paints are so slow to harden properly - the blower only has a pretty small surface area anyway, and should finish OK if I move on quickly with the brush. A satin finish might mask any minor funnies anyway.