Repainting Doors with the GRACO ULTRA | Does it Suck?

This is Chris, the Idaho painter. In this video, I'm going to be painting some metal doors right here. And I'm going to show you the process using a Graco Ultramax handheld airless sprayer. And this is a really good option to spray these doors. I just got three doors right here. This is inside of a restaurant and I don't want to have to just break out an airless sprayer with a long hose and have to load it up with um a gallon of paint. This is only going to take a gallon of paint to spray these three doors. Great option. Holds a quart. A quart might do all three of these doors, but it's really simple, easy. Don't have any cords attached to this thing. It's easy to use. Just got a couple simple little buttons. We've got a um speed um speed dial right here. You got a prime primed knob right here. Spray knob just uses your typical airless tips, but I wouldn't say they're totally typical cuz they take the low pressure tips. Graco fine finish low pressure tips. This is the ultra max model. So, you can use it with um paint uh petroleum based products like lacquer thinners and paint thinners, but we are going to be using a latex based product that dries really really fast. It's called multi-surface acrylic. So, here it is. The Graco ultra handheld spare. Got it all masked off. Just did our typical masking. Going to throw some drops in here and then start spraying. So, stay tuned. So, I'm going to show you just a little bit about this sprayer here, how it functions, how it works. It's got a cup, a removable port cup right here. And it has these soft liners. And these soft liners are reusable. You can reuse them quite a few times or you can just if you don't want to have to worry about cleaning them out, you can just throw them away. And they're very inexpensive, so you can buy more. It just comes off. It has this um filter strainer right here. It's pretty simple, basic. This thing's going to You're going to fill this up with paint, screw it back on. Once this thing is screwed on, all you got to do It's got a little vent right here. You're going to flip the little cup up the lid up on the vent. And then you're going to squeeze the bag right here till there's no more air in this bag. All the air is going to come out, and you're going to see your product come into this little cup. When it comes into the little cup right here and fills it up about halfway full, you're just going to flip this leg down. And now it's ready to go. Then all you got to do is flip it to prime. Just hit the button real fast, prime it, send it to spray, and it's going to be ready to spray. Have your tip on, ready to go. I'm going to be spraying these doors with a 310 tip. It's going to be a 310 FP Graco tip. It does have a speed dial right here. And from I've been testing these things out for quite a while now. Really like them. And but I noticed if the dials down really low, you'll still have a tendency to get that pulsating um effect where the paint pulsates and kind of stripes on um the surface that you're painting with. And it's kind of something that went on with the old sprayers, but it has the dial and you can turn it all the way up to 10. I typically use it anywhere between 7 and 10. And that's gives me the best results. But if you're going to be spraying really thin products like lacquers or something like that, you might want to turn the dial down a little bit. You're just gonna have to experiment and play around with it. But when I start to get down below five or something, then I I have a tendency to see that pulsating effect where it's leaving the paint stripe marks. So, it's got a battery. It runs on the DeWalt battery. And this is a standard DeWalt battery that goes with all of our other DeWalt tools. So, it's kind of cool. Batteries interchangeable. It comes with two batteries. very simple, easy to use. Um, quick and easy to clean up. I think the cleanup process, um, I wouldn't say it's any faster than cleaning it up with say a Graco 395. Uh, I I I can clean them up. It takes about the same amount of time, even though this thing looks a lot smaller. Seems like it would take half the amount of time cleaning up, but it's about the same amount of time. But cleaning up a Graco 395 is not that hard to do. It cleans up really fast. So, um, I don't think it's a downfall. that doesn't clean up faster, but it's just kind of just a process. You got to take this thing off. We reuse the cups. So, we clean out the cups. You got to take the strainer off. When you fill it up with um clean this little strainer out, and you're going to fill it up with water, shake this thing really good. And then spray paint, put more clean water in, and just keep repeating the process. And it cleans up just like that. So, I'm getting ready to spray the doors. Got everything mashed off. One final step is I'm going to be cleaning and glossing these doors with a deglosser. So, I just got myself a clean rag and I'm going to start wiping them down really good just to make sure there's no contaminants on them. Make sure there's no dust and grime on them also. So, now I'm going to go load up the sprayer. Just got a quart right here. Going to load it up with my product. Pretty simple, easy to do. Just got my cup here sight. Just going to squeeze my liner now. And I eventually see it start the little cup start to fill up. Starting to fill up. Now it's about halfway full. Lock it back in place. Now all I got to do is set it to prime. So, I sprayed the first door right here. And typically what I don't do is um turn this dial down under usually seven. I'm usually spraying it at um between somewhere between 7 and 10. But this product is really thin and it um I had to dial it down just cuz of um the overspray and kickback I was getting. and I dialed it down to four and it still performed pretty good and didn't give me um lap marks or start and stops where it actually pulsates. So, it looked great. Sprayed really well at um number four. So, I'm going to spray the next door right now. So, we sprayed these first two doors right here and got a little problem with some fish iron on it. There's some contaminant even though I cleaned it with a glosser. So, going to have to spot prime some of this where we think there's going to be some contaminants and the fish eyes. Again, this works. Fish eye versus spot prime that and reshoot them once again when it dries. This stuff dries extremely fast. So, I want to bring up a couple points about this sprayer. There's, you know, a bunch of reps selling a bunch of people buying them for um basically their everyday sprayer. This thing is not designed as an everyday sprayer. I've pulled these things apart and replaced the pumps on them and it's just a little tiny pump. This is a small project sprayer and that is it. So, if I was in this house and I was spraying all the doors and I missed one of the doors, I possibly would load this thing up to spray the door with it. If I missed the window sill, I probably load it up to spray a window sill. Or if I just had a piece of furniture, it's a small project sprayer. If I have to load this thing up more than twice, I'm going to jump right to my everyday sprayer, a bigger pump. This thing, if you use it to spray this entire bedroom, you're probably going to burn this thing up pretty fast. It works way too hard for the pump that it is. Just get it for stuff that you miss or just really small projects. Also, I get asked a lot, can I run flammable products like oilbased paints or lacquers in this thing? It comes with a little device. we'll call it just a gadget that grounds it so you won't explode when you're using it. So, the Graco Ultra is the only one that can be used with flammable products. The other ones do not. Um, Graco Ultra, it says it right here on the side and it comes with the attachment inside that grounds it. So, small project sprayer for you. So, I'm done spraying these doors here. I've got it took me two coats on both sides of the doors and just a few things that I learned with a sprayer. And there's a lot of questions of what the battery life is on these um little handheld units from Graco. And I used one battery to do both sides of these doors. So, there's three doors and I did two coats on each door. And it almost took about about 3/4 of a gallon and I only used one battery. The battery still has a lot of life to it. And another thing I learned, I used a product. I never sprayed, you know, through one of these sprayers before, this multi-surface acrylic, a pretty thin product. And um I know I said earlier in the video that I usually always spray from anywhere from 7 up to 10, but I had to turn this thing down. I had it down to about five was about the really um the perfect, you know, spray pattern for it. and it didn't do what I thought it would do with would it give you that, you know, pulsating effect on the doors. The spray came out um perfect right around that five setting. So, that was something I learned. Um tip right here, uh pro tip is I've got it all cleaned up now. It took me the clean it took me about um 10 minutes to clean it up, but I've got some pump armor in here that was supplied with a sprayer. And then I'm just keeping my tips inside the pup armor left over inside the cup. Just going to screw it. That way the tips don't get misplaced, lost, and it keeps them nice and fresh from drying out. And um anything else I learned this? Let's see. I don't think so. It actually worked out really well. Uh the overspray with this product, there's quite a bit of overspray and fallout. I don't think it had anything to do with the tips. But here's another uh quick tip is uh I typically use a 310 when I spray all my trim and doors, but when I started spraying it with these new FFLP tips, the FLP the FFLP tips, uh the new ones aren't really like the old um the old fine finish tips, the 310. It seems like the spray patterns a lot smaller. So, instead of using a 310 on these doors, I jumped up to a I think it's a it was a five. I'll even make sure the exact. And I would have never thought I would spray it with this size of a tip, but I sprayed these doors with a 514. So, it's kind of interesting. It's a 514 FFLP, and that's what I end up spraying the doors with. the the 310 was just too um the the pattern was just really narrow, not like a 310 typically would be. And so it's just way too many passes on the door. I didn't want it was um it caused a few little runs here and there the on the first coat of the doors. There was a major fisheye problem with the doors. So we had to take some shellac primer. If you don't if you never run into fisheye problems where the paint is beating away cuz there's a difference in surface tension between the two paints. It's kind of a pain in the neck, but don't panic. Uh shellac primer will usually resolve your um fisheye problems right then and there. So, there you have it. Um we're just finishing up the painting of the walls. Got to finish doing the cutins in here. But that was a video on the Graco handheld. Hopefully you've enjoyed this video. If you have, please consider subscribing to our channel. Please consider giving us a thumbs up and a like. The tools and accessories in our videos are always down in the video description if you want to learn more about them or purchase them. Check out our website, the idaho painter.com. The idaho painter.com right there. And we're on Instagram, Idaho Painters, and Facebook, the Idaho Painter. We'll see you on our next video. Owen.