I had an old school painter once tell me that when spraying pearl or metallic to pour the base back into the mixing cup during flash to prevent it from pooling at the bottom of the gun cup. Anyone else heard of or tried it?

I would answer that with a question....was he talking about an old style siphon/pressure gun or the newer gravity guns? Old school guys (uhhhh....I might be one of them) did a lot of things different back in the day. We had things like a Binks #7, real metal in the metallics, lower solids lacquers, etc.

He was talking about gravity feed hvlp guns with modern pearls and metallics. Of course, he was a guy that wouldn't let the truth get in the way of a good story.

I don't know about the old school (not that I'm young just didn't spray back in the lacquer days) but when spraying a complete I usually have to add more paint to the cup during flash times.

When the paint looks to be pretty much flashed off, I mix up some more in a cup and then dump the remainder from my paint gun into it. Mix and the pour through a paper funnel filter back into the gun.

I normally don't mix up a big batch of paint to start with. Too many things have gone wrong during a spray job (like accidentally spilling the entire cup of paint on the floor) to keep me mixing a quart at a time.

Yep,^^^^^^^^^ that's what I do as well. Back in the "real" old days we used to use ball bearings in the siphon cup guns to keep our metallics moving around and mixed. There were even "agitator" style cups that used some of the gun air supply to keep things mixed.

I can see were it could be a problem with the gravity guns. you spray a coat on then put the gun in the rack for 10 min. of flash time some settling of the flake could happen. it shouldn't be a problem to dump it back and probably rinse the gun one time with reducer. I use a suction gun and just set it down after flash I pick it up and shake it a little and spray, I do use a gravity gun for the clear coat. and yes I'm old school, I do have the Binks # 7 and the agitator cup setting on the shelf.
Jay D.

Ha, ha, finally.....I feel a little less old....... You tell em' Jay.......

i use both 3M PPS and SATA RPS its not really much of a problem these days between flash times. if im doing flake jobs i just turn the gun upside down with cup attached then shake it before next coat. i got a few binks 7 myself.

go ahead laugh your self to death old is fun.
Jay D.

Hey, I can't laugh! I learned with a binks 7 and the Sharpe version. With acrylic enamel! And I well remember the agitator cups, too. Maybe I'm old school and didn't know it.