Anyone here decided to bring paint tinting in-house? I've been approached by several of my paint vendors, including SW, about supposed systems they've put together that are designed for the end-user to be able to tint paint with no discernible variation in color between batches (1 or 5 gallon).

Have you found these systems useful and "lean", or have you found them to be a maintenance hazard or money-pit?

And are you able to train a modestly skilled spray technician how to tint paint, or does this require someone who is truly an upper-crust lead finisher to do properly?

I have to admit that I see lots of potential good here, especially in avoiding excessive inventory in paint sitting around.... but I see a lot of potential frustration as well.

Truly I think paint suppliers such as Sherwin are using this tactic to trim some of their own overhead while trying to upsell it like it's a positive thing. For one you are going to have to have a fairly high end guy trained to do this specific task depending on your volume. It's going to take hours to process one color through it's steps to ensure a good match and just as well as good organization skills to enter/record the formulas into a database and keep a spray out card on file for product comparison with making batches. the tints are very expensive in gallon form and you will need to keep a stock of an array of tints..... your cost of around $35 for a decent CV just went up severely when your finisher is spending hours on one color dialing it in...… Let the paint suppliers eat the overhead and keep them on their toes about making good repeatable matches... My .02$

Hi Matt!
We buy some comercial NGR stain colors (mahogany, oak,cherry, walnut,white ) something about 10 colors. And butyl acetate. There´s a person who write the formulas, we weight on a small scale. We prepare ours step by step panels. We´ve been working this way for many years and we do not have colors problems. Yes, we have old stuff in our inventory, but we bill the whole mixture on the furniture order.
In the same store our supplier has a tintometric PU system for full tone shades, we never had color problems with this system too.
But if you run so many diferent colors everyday, and you are far way from any store, maybe it will help you.
Good Luck

Shane, I'm inclined to agree with you. I haven't yet seen one of these systems truly explained to me in a way that makes me think it's going to be LESS hassle for me than it is for the professionals sitting in the paint store.

Basically, I asked them why it was that this new "in-shop" system can tint a can of paint without showing batch variations, yet they can't even do that in the paint warehouse with their umpteen-thousand dollar systems.

I do have to admit, if the system is as good as they claim it is, it can definitely clean up some stuff in my own facility. Less "upcoming job" inventory sitting around, less leftover paint sitting around, and I can potentially turn a custom paint sample back to the client in 24-48 hours without having to send stuff across town.

But then again, who's ever seen a perfect world like that?

Mauricio, thanks for your input about mixing your own NGR stains, I can see why it's an advantage for some.

We make all of our own stain formulas and batch our own stain using Sherwin aurora system with their D59 tints..... Keeping up with stain formulas and creating custom colors is very easy and not a huge cost to keep up besides the intial cost for the whole set of tints, 4 tier Fillon mixing machine and nice fillon scale..... Opaque paints are a totally different ballgame.

I bought the General Finishes paint mixing station a decade ago and I loved it.

The best part was compatibility across the spectrum so I used the same pigments and dues for stains, paints, glazes and toners.

With that I only mixed batches to the size I wanted which reduced waste and saved lots of money and time not running to a paint store or waiting a day or two to have it shipped.

Then they stopped supporting it and switched to the RTM stain system and they went a different direction