Do you use a Hot Box to dry paint?

[rel14]

Just wondering if anyone uses a hot box to dry paint,,

Mine is a 2x3 thin wood box, with a door, i lined it with alum, backed insulation, and a 40 watt bulb,

stays at 119 degrees,,

Edited April 9, 2012 by rel14

[Brizio]

No.

[Agent G]

Yes, it's called my back yard. I spray indoors, wait a bit, then place the pieces in direct sunlight. Done.

G

[Sixx]

would that be a dehydrator? coz I use 3 of em!!!

[Dr. Cranky]

Actually, I've been watching some Japanese model builders use a little oven to cure their paints as well as Sculpie figures.

[CadillacPat]

Absolutely!!!!!!!!!!!! Whether working with DieCast or Plastic.

I couldn't do without mine since they perform not only as dry staging areas but are functional for quickly curing MilliPut, Apoxie Putty, JB Weld and QuikSteel all of which I use. Additionally they serve to keep bodies and pieces clean until I move onto the next step of paint.

I came up with my CadillacPat Fact-O-Bake Ovens back around 1998 and started showing others at Custom Contests and Conventions how to make their own.

They are very simple as Form follows Function and they can be sized to fit anyone's needs.

I use 3 separate Ovens since I sometimes do short runs of Promotional Customs and sometimes as many as 850 in a run of a single style.

Here's some pics,

My oldest Medium size Oven with my tabletop Paint Booth stacked on top.

Very user friendly allowing me to place bodies in it right from the Paint Booth.

Holds an easy 25 1/64 scale bodies or a single 1/18 body.

A much smaller portable Oven that I haul around and show others who work on smaller quantities of stuff,

Holds about 9 1/64 scale bodies,

Continued in Reply,

Scroll down.

[CadillacPat]

My largest Oven which holds 55 1/64 scale bodies,

Here you can see some of the '59 Caddy's that Jenna Jameson contacted me to produce for a premiere of one of her Movies.

You'll notice a reoccuring theme with the sheet of tempered glass just below the lightbulbs.

This glass serves multiple purposes,

It warms up and distributes heat consistently and evenly throughout the Oven,

It serves as a platform for quickly curing bodywork (metal bodies only) and also quickly dries them after they are washed just before Primer goes on,

It keeps dust off the painted bodies as they dry.

Remember you don't want to cook your paint.

You merely want to gently assist paint while curing by adding a little heat.

Different wattage and loosening or tightening any number of lightbulbs in the larger Oven allows you to control your temperature.

Here's about 1/3 of a Convention order I used the larger oven for,

CadillacPat

[Rob McKee]

That is amazing Pat.

[Dr. Cranky]

Wow, Pat, you've got a factory going on there. Amazing stuff, thanks for sharing.

[CadillacPat]

Thanks Rob, and Dr. Cranky,

Sadly due to picture limitations I had to break down my post into parts, always leaving the chance that other replies will be placed in the middle of it.

I Emailed Gregg again to find out if posts are limited and to what extent.

None of my Tutorials would come close to submitting without them all being rewritten into several successive Replies.

Thanks again,

CadillacPat

Edited April 8, 2012 by CadillacPat

[JamesW]

My largest Oven which holds 55 1/64 scale bodies,

Here you can see some of the '59 Caddy's that Jenna Jameson contacted me to produce for a premiere of one of her Movies.

You'll notice a reoccuring theme with the sheet of tempered glass just below the lightbulbs.

This glass serves multiple purposes,

It warms up and distributes heat consistently and evenly throughout the Oven,

It serves as a platform for quickly curing bodywork (metal bodies only) and also quickly dries them after they are washed just before Primer goes on,

It keeps dust off the painted bodies as they dry.

Remember you don't want to cook your paint.

You merely want to gently assist paint while curing by adding a little heat.

Different wattage and loosening or tightening any number of lightbulbs in the larger Oven allows you to control your temperature.

Here's about 1/3 of a Convention order I used the larger oven for,

CadillacPat

[heatride]

Wow Pat please keep hanging around here I have so much to learn , it's pure

selfishness on my part lol ! That's very impressive .........

[CadillacPat]

Wow Pat please keep hanging around here I have so much to learn , it's pure

selfishness on my part lol ! That's very impressive .........

Thanks Man,

What part of Louisiana are you from?

I grew up in Chalmette/New Orleans

CadillacPat

[Dave Ambrose]

Yes, I call it a bake box, but it's the same thing. Mine is very simple.

I take a medium sized cardboard box; like the ones you get from Amazon. I cut a small hole in one side for a cord, and put an automotive trouble light (aka drop light) in the box. Insert parts, turn on the light, and close the box. My drop light is two small fluorescent tubes. Not a lot of watts but enough to get the box up to 95F. It helps a lot with enamel paints.

[CadillacPat]

Simple is good Dave.

I've shown guys doing small scale diecast how to take a 3lb. coffee can, cut both ends out, wash it and dry it and get a $7 gooseneck lamp from Target to bend over the top.

The can warms up evenly and paint and clear lay down like glass.

Give some thought to the wattage of the bulb and the proximity of the lamp to the paint.

That's one more benefit of the Ovens, that warming the paint makes it flow out nice and smooth.

All one needs to remember is the presence of dust being circulated if you must assemble your Oven each time you use it.

Wipe the lamp, bulb, and inside of the Oven down before each use.

All my Ovens have doors on them so they stay nice and clean inside.

CadillacPat

[Dr. Cranky]

A bake box, I like the sound of that. I'm surprised nobody has jumped into the market by making them reasonably cheap and selling them. Something that would bake one body and extra parts . . .

[High octane]

NO

[Dr. Cranky]

LOL, Nick, no bake box for you?

[Burnout]

I just tried it for the first time. I used Testors enamel and didn't want to wait however long it takes to cure. (I usually use lacquer which cures plenty fast). I work in a lab setting and my current work is run at 109 deg F so I just stuck my model body with a couple of test pieces in the test enclosure (with my lab experiment!) for 24 hrs and it seemed to do the trick. I don't know what the optimum temp should be but the body was ready to sand/polish after that one day. I will most likely do the same in the future.

[Mike Kucaba]

I used to use a dehydrator back in IL .Now that I'm in AZ there is not that much need for it. There were plans for a drying oven in one of my FSM back many years ago,and I may build one of those for the chilly winter months. I'd like to have something big for large scale,and to keep the dust off.

[charlie8575]

Never heard of these before.

Great idea- I might try doing something similar to Pat's boxes. I like this, especially as I still do quite a bit of enamel work.

Charlie Larkin

[Jdurg]

Just curious, but are there ventilation fans/ports in there so the vapors can escape? After a while, you'd figure that the box would get saturated in vapors/fumes and then the vapors would have a tough time escaping from the curing paint as the air would be fully saturated. Also for safety reasons, you might want to avoid having flammable vapors/fumes in a box where a faulty lightbulb could create issues.

I'm not trying to be critical and mean here! Just curious as I may want to build one of these to help me dry the parts of the kits I'm building.

[CadillacPat]

Mr hobby makes one if you can find one in the US.

Not sure of the price on this bad boy ether.

Found one in CA.

$209.95

Grayghost,

You need to place your bodies on stands to turn them around while painting.

I don't see much in this lunch box style dryer.

You have to use stands to handle your Models while paint, placing in the Ovens, and removing from the ovens for successive stages of paint.

This oven apparently directs the user to place freshly painted bodies on a grill structure and how would one do that.

You'd have to grab the body somewhere and set it down on wet painted edges.

I don't even think this box would warm left over toast.

Just curious, but are there ventilation fans/ports in there so the vapors can escape? After a while, you'd figure that the box would get saturated in vapors/fumes and then the vapors would have a tough time escaping from the curing paint as the air would be fully saturated. Also for safety reasons, you might want to avoid having flammable vapors/fumes in a box where a faulty lightbulb could create issues.

I'm not trying to be critical and mean here! Just curious as I may want to build one of these to help me dry the parts of the kits I'm building.

Jdurg,

I've used my Ovens for 13 years.

There is just not that much vapor excaping from a paintjob.

Lightbulbs won't ignite the minute amount of liquids that cooks off from the paintjob of our scale Models.

I hear the same flammable vapor discussion whenever I post my TableTop Paint Booth about using bathroom exhaust fans.

Reducer and other paint component vapors cook off in the first few minutes, they don't linger around and collect.

Paintjobs, unless you like the thick molasses on a candied apple look, are minutely thin.

Most of the Reducer is dispersed as the paint emerges from your AirBrush.

As far as safety concerns on these homemade PaintBooths and Ovens, just make sure you have your wiring correct and secure.

For all the worrying, in the same amount of time you could already have built you one.

I built my large Oven, 37" W x 23" H x 22" D for less than $100 with 3/4" Plywood and double sliding glass doors making up most of the cost.

My Medium sized Oven pictured was made with 1/2" plywood and the door hardware made up most of the expense since I wanted one of those push and open doors like you find on stereo cabinets.

There is a reason companies use scare tactics about safety regulations, so you'll buy instead of build your own.

I won't argue my methods, I speak from experience, years and years of experience.

I've got an old Paint Booth thread here that has pretty much discussed this.

Just curious but what do you mean by a "faulty LightBulb"?

If they are faulty, they won't turn on.

CadillacPat

[Jdurg]

Oh there are no worries. By faulty lightbulb, I mean one that would short out at the connection due to poor construction, or ones that develop a crack in the seal so while they won't light up, the electricity still goes through them. I've, unfortunately, had a few of those in my lifetime where I put the bulb in, then had a quick spark and flash and the bulb was quickly replaced. Scared the ###### out of me for a bit though. lol.

[CadillacPat]

Oh there are no worries. By faulty lightbulb, I mean one that would short out at the connection due to poor construction, or ones that develop a crack in the seal so while they won't light up, the electricity still goes through them. I've, unfortunately, had a few of those in my lifetime where I put the bulb in, then had a quick spark and flash and the bulb was quickly replaced. Scared the ###### out of me for a bit though. lol.

Okay, that spark you saw would not be nough to ignite paint, perhaps a house full of hydrogen gas but not paint.

Pat