Waterborne paint

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Hello and sorry for the dumb newbie question. I have a small cabinet shop and specialize in built ins. I do 1 to 2 kitchens a year and a lot of vanities. I sub out a lot of the painting that I can’t handle(kitchens, or bigger jobs), but have been painting a lot of my built ins and vanities with Benjamin Moore Advance paint to match what the rest of the room trim is. I’d like to step my game up and use more “cabinet grade” waterborne finishes. My local paint store carries ML Campbell products, but no one their can tell me much in the way of properly using them(I’m usually told to look it up online). I searched the knowledge archive and couldn’t find what I’m looking for. I want to be able to paint a vanity or small kitchen with a good durable waterborne topcoat. Most of my work is soft maple face frames and door frames with mdf panels. I have decent spray area, an hvlp gun, and a couple of graco 390 airless pumps. Any advice would be welcome. Thanks

Pat

ML Campbell Agualente is what you want. It can tinted to any color. Sprays fine right out of the can. You can use HVLP or air assisted airless. Dries way faster than BM Advance and provides a better finish in every way.

Cheers,
Pat

Matt

What about primer? I usually like to use oil based on mdf. Does that work under agualente? Can I spray agualente through just an airless? Thanks

Pat

MLC's WB primer is pretty good. It's stain blocking, dries fast, and is really easy to sand. I personally wouldn't mix water-based with oil-based products of any kind if I can help it. Oil-based just takes way too long to dry for a production shop. The MLC primer is pretty thick, so I typically thin it a little (10% water). I spray the primer with a HVLP gun with a 2.0 tip. I haven't had good luck getting it to spay well with my CAT AAA rig. I spray the Agualente topcoats with the AAA rig using a .009 or .011 tip.

Cheers,
Pat

John

Member

I've never used Aqualente, but I almost always use BIN white pigmented shellac based primer under the WB paints I spray. It sprays great with a HVLP gravity feed gun because the viscosity is surprisingly low and, because it's shellac based it works great on MDF. Two or three coats will even fill cut edges.

John

Pat

I've used BIN under Agualente in the past and it worked fine. I'd recommend testing it first to make sure it's still good, as MLC has been known to tweak their formulas.

Adam

The MLC waterborne primer is as good and better than most solvent based primers. It drys super fast. You can lay it down heavy. Sands beautifully. The can is heavy like sheetrock compound. I've always sprayed it unthinned with a 1.7 n/n thru gravity and the paint pot. Bin can be used with just about anything. Its not good for spraying. The alcohol drys so fast it tends to clog the tip. It clogs paper badly. Its really thin so it's hard to get a nice thick coat.

You will not regret the MLC.

Matt

Thanks for all the good info. So I go to my local paint store and ask about Agualente. They tell me because it was a slow mover, I have to order it in in four gallons increments, and they only order once a month from MLC. And the kicker is they told me Sherwin Williams is considering closing the company, so their not sure if they will carry any MLC in the future. The paint store does carry Gemini products, but they don’t have any WB products as well. So it looks like I will have to drive thirty minutes each way to go to Sherwin Williams and use their products. I did alittle online research and it looks like kem Aqua is the product that is the closest to agualente. Does anyone have any tips on this product? Is the primer good like the MLC primer? Thanks for everyone’s help

Brian

Member

Gemini does have waterborne products, your paint store may not be carrying them.

Jonathan Mahnken

I wrote a post a ways down the list called agualente primer revisited. Its about the agualente primer and airless sprayers. General finishes products are better in my opinion, and their white poly kind of splits the difference between regular paint and the tinted agualente. If you cant get the General Finishes stuff in your area I have also had decent results with Valspar's Zenith and Chemcraft's water based.

But honestly if time is not a huge factor BM Advance, and BM Aura are really nice paints, and once fully dry are quite durable. And they actually have better flexibility over the long term. The reason I went with GF for my shop was because it was so much faster(dry times) and still gave me a quality "Enamel-like" result.

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