Thinning Precatalyzed Lacquer
Adding thinner reduces the solids ratio of the mixture; warming it up does not. April 19, 2006
Question
I have been spraying more and have been using Magnalac. I was wondering to what percentage you thin your material? I am using HVLP with a 1.5 tip. Also is there any benefit to moving up to Magnamax?
Forum Responses
(Finishing Forum)
From contributor A:
I thin 10 % - moving up to higher grade lacquer depends on what you are building
From contributor B:
Viscosity is more important than % of thinner. Get and use a viscosity cup and you can fine tune your thinner addition. You can also heat your lacquer to reduce viscosity.
From contributor C:
I've sprayed both Magnalac and Magnamax. There is no comparison. I cannot tell the difference between Magnalac and cheap nitrocellulose snot. Magnamax is a fine product. If Magnamax was removed from the shelf, I'd not use Magnalac - I'd either use Duravar, Krystal, or perhaps switch to Chemcraft's Opticlear.
From contributor D:
Magnalac is thinned with the lacquer thinner mentioned by MLC in their tech sheet.
Contributor B singles in on the only important issue, viscosity. You match the viscosity of the material you are spraying to your needle/nozzle of your spray gun. The thickness of a material is lowered in one of two ways, either by introducing more reducer (thinning) or by raising the temperature of the material. When you raise the temperature of the material you do not lower the percentage of solids by volume. When you reduce the material you do lower the percentage of solids by volume.
Magnalac is way too finicky a material for a lot of us. It does not seem to tolerate going over that dried mil thickness unless you do not mind a finish that shatters. As far as the durability of Magnalac, it is little better than ordinary lacquer. It is a precat, sure, but so what. There are so many other precats that perform so much better than Magnalac after three weeks of crosslinking. Magnamax is just one of them.
My favorite finish is lacquer. Calling it by some gooey name is inaccurate. That label of derision belongs to the many waterbase finishes and only to that part of the game when you need to strip off waterbase.
From contributor C:
I kind of like the gimmicky names for one reason (other than they're easier for me to remember). Customers like gimmicky names. Telling them their $60,000 cabinets are finished in precat lacquer sounds ok to them, but tell them it's Magnamax and it sounds a little more Schwarzenegger.
I'll never understand, though, where Chemcraft came up with "Danspeed" as the name for a conversion varnish. Sounds like "Dan's peed" in a bucket and we slopped it on some cabinets.
From contributor B:
You should love Becker's Bernyl Strong.
From contributor E:
Danspeed is not a conversion varnish. It is a post-catalyzed lacquer
