How to thicken paint. Paint for Cabinet Tips you need to know.

this chris idaho painter here on paint live tv today i'm going to be talking about thickening your paints and you know if you've ever wanted to thicken your paint you can actually thicken your paint and there are some benefits to it i'm going to be talking about that i'm going to show you the easy process of how to thicken your paint i'll be talking about how you can thin your paint also so if you want to know how to thicken some paint stay tuned for this video [Applause] [Music] all right so i'm going to talk a little bit about thickening your paint and and somebody would ask you know why in the world would you want to thicken your paint it's like we talk about thinning our paints all the time we're adding mineral spirits to paint we're adding water to paint we're adding lacquer thinner to paints and to thin them did you know get the viscosity down to make them a um a thinner viscosity product and to spray better now why would you want to thicken your paint and um that's a good question so some products nowadays some of the uh 2k polys and polyurethane products out there are very thin and they don't do what we call hang very well so if you're spraying vertically if you're one of those guys that's spraying like with a psdr system so you can paint cabinets fast and efficiently you're spraying vertically and you're more likely to get runs than if your cabinets are laying down your cabinet doors are laying down flat i mean you simply just can't get runs when they're laying flat you can really load the paint on so one of the drawbacks is spraying vertically yes is runs and if you're spraying your doors um horizontally oh you still got to spare your face frames and you can easily get runs on face frames also if you're using products that have a really thin viscosity to them and they don't hang well and run easy so there are some products that um i've been using you know over the last two years that i really like to thicken the product because it gives them the ability to hang better and then it actually um gives the the product a little bit more body when it actually dries out so i'm going to show you this simple little process i use a product right here this is um cw9002 a water-based thickener that i add to the product and there's there's nothing you know uh really scientific about it you just add as much thickener to the product you want to get the viscosity that you're looking for to get the results that you're looking for and one of the 2k polys i've been recently using it comes out extremely thin and it's been running you know really easily by adding a thickener to it it hangs a lot better and i'm having a lot more success in results with the product this is a thickener right here and i'm not actually sure what the chemical makeup of that thickener is but it kind of just looks like cornstarch and somebody actually in one of my posts had told me that you can thicken your paint with cornstarch which is a food product and i'm not sure you would really want to do that um but you know hey a lot of people do a lot of unusual things like adding soap to your paint to get it to level out i wouldn't add soap to my paint i just use excitement exim latex extender but i started messing around the product and starting to change the viscosities to get a thicker you know um 2k poly and i started adding a tablespoon of the product in there it thickened it up it was really nice i really liked it i started using it right away i'm like i want it a little bit thicker i got to a point where one of the gallons i added uh three tablespoons to the gallon and what i noticed that it actually takes a little bit of time for it to thicken and by adding multiple tablespoons i didn't think it was thick enough but then i realized it takes about 30 minutes for the thickener to really um work well and thicken it to fit and thicken the paint or coating to um the viscosity that it's actually doing or how it's actually supposed to act so give it some time put your thickener in there stir it in there gives it some give it some time to do the work and thicken the product don't be in a hurry and i'm going to say probably 30 minutes to an hour before you begin using the product um or testing the viscosity or even adding a catalyst now all you got to do is just really simple i just use a tape tablespoon i got plastic tablespoons metal tablespoons i just you know keep in my vehicle that i just add the thickener uh too so i just take it and it's super thick like it says it's a thickener so the product is thick and i'm not like measuring it out like um food like an exact tablespoon but i just get that tablespoon dip it in there now i got a bunch of product on there and then i'm gonna take that product and begin dumping that in and i just we call that one tablespoon and you just begin stirring that slowly stirring that into your product now the thickener is a water-based product so when you're done you can clean up your tablespoon with water what i typically do is just drop it in a five gallon bucket that already has water so i'm just gonna slowly stir this in and some of this is gonna be just trial and error i mean a gallon is always changes the viscosity you know for me to exactly what i'm looking for everybody has you know what they like every uh most paints will you'll have a viscosity rating of what you should be spraying at that get good results on and um so once again it is kind of just like trial and error so i'm just going to let you know the product run off it's water-based so i just wipe usually just wipe it off scrape it in my container now this i'm just going to drop into a 5 gallon bucket of water i'm going to drop it into a measuring cup right there and usually just scrape off good to just wear a pair of latex gloves if you don't want any of the product on your hands just gonna set that aside and i'll just begin stirring it in once again it mixes in pretty fast just stir that around for several minutes i'm gonna put the lid back on i'm gonna let it set and then i'm going to stir it one more time that's how simple and easy it is to thicken your paint now thinning your paints there's a lot of paints out there that don't especially in other countries like in europe that don't spray very well through an airless sprayer so you have you actually have to thin them this is an unusual case where actually thickening the paint works really really well makes the product perform a lot better now this is a white and the viscosity of whites is too typically a little bit thicker i've been recently spraying some really dark bronzes some really dark blues adding a lot of that um tint color it into the paint thins the paint out quite a bit and um causes it to not hang as well and that's where your thickener will really come into play once again when it comes to the products itself thickening the products make sure you always you know do what the manufacturer recommends you know if they um tell you that you should not be adding a thickener to the paint you probably shouldn't be adding a thickener to the paint but there's quite a few products out there cabinet coatings and stuff that you can actually you know thicken the paint it does adding this thickener doesn't degrade the quality of the paint at all it doesn't change the color of the paint either so it's a great product to use i've had a lot of success with it so once i'm done stirring this in so i'm just going to put my lid back on and then i'm going to let it set for about a half hour stir it again and i can check my viscosity if you've never checked the viscosity of paint before you know when it comes to cabinet coatings there's especially spraying through an airless sprayer there are certain viscosities you're actually searching for i've got a video on um how to actually check viscosities of paint and stuff and um pretty in depth but i'm going to give you just a little look at checking the viscosity i've got multiple viscosity yo testers right here a sata cup ford ford cup a really cheap cup here's a zone viscosity uh meter right here this is actually a really nice one with a long handle on it i really like that one a lot um very professional looking viscosity meter but even these cheap ones can test your viscosity and the simple way to test viscosity is i'm gonna dip this thing into my product i'm gonna rise it out the product's gonna begin spilling out of your viscosity meter and you're gonna time it it's gonna be just pouring out and you're gonna you're gonna have a start a stop watch some type of way you can you know run your time stop watch use your iphone something like that when i rise it out i'm going to start my time it'll start pulling out it's going to have a steady stream as soon as that stream breaks i'm going to hit the stopwatch and that time is going to be the reading and now you're um there's a lot of different readings and of variations in those readings that you want to use to chart out things and get the proper viscosity that you want but just a look at it what it looks like here or go check out my video in depth on testing viscosity so i'm just going to fill up this is a ford four cup right here i'm going to have my timer just going to raise it up click my timer i'm going to allow this to start running steady stream you can see it's got a steady stream so this is a fairly thick product and it's just going to continue rotting continue running and this is going to run for a long time almost there now the stream starting to break now right well right there we go so now the stream's starting to break and that's going to be my viscosity i'm going to register that time that's my viscosity and typically what i'm looking for in catacody is when i'm spraying through an hvlp sprayer i'm looking for 34 seconds i want something that's going to run and i want that stream to break at around 34 seconds and that's going to give me the viscosity that i'm looking for now if you're the type of person that doesn't like to thin your paints or thicken your paints because you think it degrades the quality of the paint or there's other kind of issues with it you can actually heat up your paint and um heating up your paint will actually thin it so there are times when we will heat up our paint and we'll put put it in a bucket of warm water and let it set for like an hour so and if you do that that's going to thin your paint there's also bucket warmers you can put your paint into that'll warm your paint that's going to change the viscosity of your paint and make it thinner now with that said over time if you're spraying in a cool environment once you warm it it is going to start cooling it down if you take it out of that warm water or out of that bucket warmer so you got to keep that in mind too but simple little tips and tricks you'll thickening your paint uh thinning talking about thinning your products um should you thicken should you thin it's um really up to you and the desired role results that you want to get if you've got any questions about this video just leave it in the comments section down below if you got any tips or tricks thickening or thinning your paint let us know any products that you use anything unusual out there if you haven't subscribed to our channel hit the subscribe button hit the notification bell because if you don't hit them both it doesn't really do anything you'll never get notified i come come out with a new video and it's just a simple email that just notifies you it's a simple way to help support us making these free videos to help you guys out and if you've enjoyed it give us a thumbs up and we'll see you next time right here on paint [Music]