Fonken floorstander MKII

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frugal-phile™
Joined 2001
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ecir38 said:
do you have any detail pics for the fe127 around the center cone?

This is one on my bench now (pre-Gloss). Note that it has 2 double rings at the dustcap. Depending on when your drivers were made the 2 closest can be combined into a single one at the juncture.

The last 60 drivers i've had have used less black glue/gunk and there is a crevasse where i used to put the middle of a 3-row treatment

dave
 

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Thanks Dave.

Just playing around today painting blocks with a #4 and #5 tip and I think I will use the #5 for the outer ring. What do you use for the outer ring blocks? If I recalll you use the #56 for the inner cone blocks and I played a little with that tip too.
 
GM

You should get much better performance actually.

One of the difficult portions of the brush method is learning flow control in a reliable manner. With an airbrush this issue is minimized. My experiments with the Micro Gloss and an airbrush, were plagued by foaming. This could have been the fault of a basic lack of knowledge upon my part, but the two brushes I tried were not a success. So, congratulations and could you write a bit about the techniques you used please?

Based upon the thoughts of John K in the tech thread, anything that allowed the gloss coat to be more flexible, after application and cure, should be of benefit and the airbrush would certainly help achieve that.

Bud
 
True, all so true.

WRT Micro Gloss, Googling only returned a polishing compound, so can't be successfully sprayed unless it can be thinned to a very low viscosity, though for driver tweaking I don't see how it could be of use. I assume it's a coating though, so please post a link and/or its particulars.

WRT foaming, I've never experience, seen, heard, or even read about any type of foaming problems with airbrushing, so please elaborate.

WRT airbrushes, mine are various '50s-60s era Binks, Paasche, systems for inks, stains, lacquers, etc. and cheap Badgers for bulk spraying and 'high' viscosity coatings. I'm not familiar with any of the overseas brands that began popping up in the '80s.

Yeah, there's cases where increasing rigidity is desirable, but for the most part you don't want to mess with a flex too much.

Your 'techniques' Q has me 'scratching my head' because to my way of thinking, I didn't/don't have one. I mean experience in the variety of ways I used to apply coatings including airbrushing meant I had a wide selection of leftovers, so grabbed whatever I thought might work and commenced to experiment with blown drivers/whatever to find the right amount/type of thinner and whether I thought it needed either a drying, retarding or flex agent.

I was just getting into the advanced water based coatings when my body ~crapped out on me in the late '90s, so not much help with these beyond the fact that they were pathetic performers early on, with poor adhesion, variable gloss, etc. that with traditional coatings were signs of a clueless operator. Really, I'd be surprised if EPA will even allow the general public to buy/use all the toxic stuff I worked with, assuming it's still made/used. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, I have no doubt that my decades of exposure is at least partially responsible for me being mentally old beyond my years.

Anyway, clue me in on what chemicals/coatings you're working with and what you want to spray/accomplish and maybe I can be of help.

GM
 
The good doctor is correct this is the preferred coating.

I have used it with both Paasche and Badger brushes, having been an avid model maker for much of my life. I used both water and alcohol to cut it with, both foamed ,though the water was by far the worst. The alcohol left me with a very short use life and not particularly repeatable poids for the viscosity. Micro Scale seem to think the material can be used without cutting, but I was not successful with either brush and any tip I could locate, except for very high volume throughput.

So, I just went back to brushes and that is the method I have transferred to many other folks, seemingly successfully.

The gloss coat material is an integral part of the mechanism of EnABL, in that it seems to allow the pattern to control a larger portion of the surface of a driver. Why this should be so, is as debatable as the actual method that the pattern is involved in, as it performs it's activities. Most of that is a moot point, in view of the results, which are never subtle and have been successful in now 300 plus drivers to three, though the recent addition to the negative column is also highly debatable.

My query was from an educational point of view. I don't think that the ordinary EnABL applier will invest in an air brush, but if we have some information that can be passed on to those who have one and want to try using it, that is very suitable to me.

Thank you for your comments to date, I hope we can drag you into our clique.

Bud
 
You're welcome!

OK, thanks, but I still don't have a clue what you mean by 'foamed'. I mean are you describing trapped air bubbles after it's dried or......?

The only thing that comes to mind WRT the former is that at least at the viscosities I typically used, a gravity feed brush is required as a siphon feed requires too much air pressure. FWIW, I typically used lacquer thinner, Zylol/Zylene or acetone with resin based coatings to get it thin/fine enough and to dry quick enough to not do any obvious damage. For plastics or similar, I primed the part with aliphatic enamel to keep the solvent from crazing/dissolving it.

Really, if I wanted to coat a 'FR' driver in toto for other than to change its color with a dye/stain, I'd experiment with industrial baking enamel if it's still available since it never hardens all the way through without being baked and even then it takes up to nine months for it to harden enough to do a machine buffing/waxing without fear of ruining the finish and never completely AFAIK.

That said, I doubt many folks would be willing to mess with such chemicals, so for water based formulated for water thinning, Floetrol is the only OTC choice to try AFAIK whether brushed, rolled or sprayed if you haven't already. I'd also try various blends of white vinegar and water.

GM
 
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