How to Setup the Expert Lumber Staining Machine

[Music] this is Chris yaho here on paint Life TV today I'm going to be demonstrating how to set up the expert Lumber staining machine this is a machine that pre- stains Lumber all the way up to a 4x1 12 so commonly used to do fence pickets before you install the lumber or before you build a deck so it comes just like this uh it has this is folded up this is kind of folded up it's on a pallet just like this everything's installed inside of it brushes and rollers are all in inside it has um four legs on it which has um Wing nuts right here these Wing nuts you just loosen them and these legs just literally just slide off so it comes without the legs on it it's sitting and mounted on the pallet and the legs are actually sitting on the pette with the machine so it comes like this completely preassembled palletized there are some tips and tricks setting this thing up to get it to you know run efficiently to get it to run smooth and to get it to run so it doesn't damage your roller I've had the opportunity to use it quite a bit now the very first time I used it I kind of damaged my foam rollers a little bit and I'm going to uh talk to you about how I damaged them the adjustments I made to make it uh work a little bit more efficiently so this is the whole machine there's no mechanical like um uh operating Parts on it you don't plug it in it's all um manual you just push a piece of lumber right through it can of show you got this is a picket that was pretty stained by the machine itself so one person's going to take a picket just feed it through can have it one man machine it can be a Twan machine another guy on the other end you to pick it through and that is how it operates right there your pick it would come out you 100% stained top bottom both sides and then both ends by touching it on the roller here so now I'm going to just go over the some of the components on this machine you've got your tank right here Reservoir this is where it's going to house we dump in 5 gallons of stain and this can actually be stained or paint you can use it for oilbased products you can use it for water-based products whatever you want to use it for it does have a strainer up top that sits in there there's three valves that your um whatever product you have in here it's going to pull down into here and this is your spreader that's going to send out your stain paint whatever product you're using and it's going to distribute it on the roller right here it'll begin once this one gets loaded up it'll distribute it down to the bottom roller I'm going to take the top off the reservoir off so we can begin showing you the inside this comes off you can just take off the res the whole Reservoir itself individually I can just set that aside the platform with the distributor plate right there comes right off has two holes in it it this is how you know there's two rivets right here it just mounts or sets right in the rivets and that's what puts it right in place to distribute the stain onto your roller so we've got our roller system this is what's going to actually apply your paint or stain to whatever Lumber or product you're using then it has a back brushing system behind that so now I'm going to show you T the typical setup if you're traveling with the machine if you just pulled it off the pallet these um are drip trays are just going to fold right down they're going to set in place just like this there are screws right here that adjust your drip plate height what you don't want is you don't want this thing you know sitting in an angle downward so if anything's dripping on it it's um going to be dripping out that way you want it to go right back into the reservoir of the expert stain machine it does have a a thing right here if you were down the the screw was all the way down more than likely it's um still well it actually does tilt a little bit out that direction so your your um product paint or stain could end up spilling off the side so you definitely want it up slightly so everything is running inside back inside your Reservoir it's got a front one and a back drip tray back here also you don't want it up too high you know cuz then it's going to interfere with feeding your Lumber you'll notice that the stain machine inside comes with two blocks these two blocks are um what it's set underneath this Reservoir right here which keeps this roller right here also um saturated and loaded that these blocks right here don't throw them away cuz they sat under here so it raises the reservoir up right underneath that Reservoir is a um strainer and a hole that comes down to a valve right here a petcock valve and this is where your stains going to pour out if you've you know purchased the stain machine recently and it came with these blocks you have like um kind of an older version they have now updated this machine new ones are coming out that don't come with these blocks I believe it comes with uh a piece of metal and magnets that raise it up cuz the blocks will have a tendency if your Reservoir is not uh spilling out and it's filling up inside here the blocks could like kind of just like float around and float away if your Reservoir you know moves so they've resolved that problem and even these blocks people just thinking they're scraps throwing them away you all you can just go cut them you know New pieces off a 2x4 if you need them if you lost them but they do serve a purpose you just set them down right underneath there your tray right here it's going to slide in it's going to just set right on those blocks and now this roller right here actually sets in a pool of your stain or paint right here and as this roller is rolling it's rolling in that pool keeping it loaded with product now we've got our drip cray set down we've got a support bar and this bar it's more of a a height guide to when I'm sending my lumber or pick it in at what angle I want it coming in at I don't want it coming in at an angle like this I don't want it too low where I'm coming in at an upward angle it should be coming in almost completely flat just like that this bar kind of is a guide it kind of gives you an idea you know if you have it set up properly and once again it can be used with um lighter Lumber or material where it can actually set there but what I want is I want my picket or Lumber to come in in and if it's if this bar is too high it's going to come in at a downward angle it's going to hit this first set of back brushes right here too low on the brushes and it's going to cause too much drag so it's going to be right here you can see the the picket is coming down it's hitting really low on the bottom set of brushes I actually want it to just come right through this Gap and so I got to lower my bar so it's going to lower my Lumber so it's going to slide right through this Gap so it's going to evenly back brush it on the top and the bottom and create the least amount of drag so in order to make that adjustment I'm going to lower my bar so now I've got it where it's just about splitting my brushes evenly right there now we're going to work on getting my my rollers and my brushes you know set up properly so the first two things I've got six rollers and the reason why I say six is they're split right here there's 1 2 3 4 five six rollers right here if I have this two like if I'm using a 2x4 say the 2x4 something thicker I'm trying to send a 2x4 through here so if I'm doing 2x4s I want to make just a simple adjustment versus a picket I'm going to raise it up a little bit just wanted to just probably squish that foam roller about um squish it down about a half an inch so now I've got probably just the right amount where it's squishing down on it pressing down on it I'm doing pickets so I'm going to just set this down loosen it up get it down to where they're touching and then just kind of just raise it up just a slight amount send it through now I've got two rollers on the sides this is going to roll the top this is going to roll the bottom besides this could come out like when I got it this these rollers were like way out here so this is like the adjustment say if you're used doing a 4X 12 piece of lumber 12 in this is going to spread out to the point where you can do a 12in wide piece of lumber I'm going to bring these in and I'm going to want these to touch I just want about like it to squish in on the foam roller about a/2 inch if you get it too squished in there too pressed up against it once again it's going to create a lot of drag it's going to be a lot harder to S to pick it through it's going to take more effort going to make sure my brushes are now set up correctly so cuz these brushes right here are going to back brush the sides so I probably want it to be touching you know the side of that by about a/ an inch this one's touching it by about a/ an inch the top one it looks like like we can probably lower it down just a little bit more now we're getting a good back brush on the two sides we're getting a back brush on the top and the Bottom now it's coming through it's going to split the back right here and it's going to be back brushing two sides this one right here this is pretty far so that's going to create a lot of drag I don't need it to be touching that hard and this one's creating a lot of drag it's really pressed down on the top one so I'm going to raise it just slightly up I think we got all the adjustments on this thing ready to go make sure all your wing nuts everything is tight so nothing comes loose make sure everything is tighten you don't want anything coming apart when you've got you know your product inside here because then that becomes you know messy now you see when you first get this machine we use it primarily to do a fencing you know right now all this set up it might seem like it's you know pretty long once it's set up you don't have ever have to do anything the rollers themselves they just come out when you're going through the cleaning process the rollers come out so you don't have to mess around you know with any of that stuff um just set it up again so one more dry run just want to make sure everything's touching everything's back brushing six rollers functioning properly 12 brushes back brushing properly mount my reservoir back on top it just sits there want to make sure your valves are in the off position before you start filling your Reservoir okay the next thing you want to do is make sure your petcock valve right here is in the open position CU if it's in the closed position your Reservoir your machine right here is going to start filling up with stain and stuff and if you get too much in it it's going to start pouring out what we wanted to do is pour out through that valve into a bucket there is a hook right under here that your bucket hangs from everything that comes from the reservoir from the rollers everything drips in down into the catch pan eventually he going to come out this valve right here into your bucket now the bucket I typically have a strainer on the bucket that's going to you know strain my product as it's going into the bucket set my bar my guide bar back down set my drip pans make sure your drip pans are um facing upward so now that the machine is all set up I do have a video on the proper use that's going to give you some tips and tricks using this machine so you don't damage your rollers so everything flows smoothly when using it it's going to be a lot less frustrating I've used it quite a bit come up with some tips and tricks that will definitely help you out so after this video go check that video out