The parts from yesterday ended up turning out pretty good. They have a slightly rough texture, but not as bad as I was afraid they might. The only strange thing is that some of the parts have a little bit of a mottled appearance. I think the lack of atomization caused that. The coverage is still good, regardless.
Today we had one more beautiful day, so after the fog finally burned off, we got back to work scuffing and washing parts. We made some tweaks to the gun setup, which really made a huge difference in the quality of the spray today. The 1.3 tip we were using yesterday was only finger tightened, and after researching it, Dad discovered that if air is allowed to get around the tip, it can affect atomization. So today I snugged the tip down with a wrench. Yesterday, the regulator at the gun wouldn't allow much change, so I took it apart today to take a look. Turns out the innards had all come apart. Once we fixed that, the air at the gun was much more stable.
I mixed up primer (10% diluted with distilled water) and used the Devilbiss DeKups. The DeKups are disposable cups that not only make cleanup much easier, but also make it a little easier to spray at odd angles. We had a lot of parts to get through today, so I mixed up about 3/4 of a Kup.
A lot of scuffing later, we sprayed all of the remaining parts and skins. It was night and day compared to the finish yesterday - much smoother and more consistent. I still wonder how how much the manual scuffing on top of the acid etch is necessary. I took a piece of alclad aluminum and acid etched the whole thing for 3 minutes, scuffed half of it with scotch-brite (also using Ekoetch), and primed it. I'll let it cure a week or two then see how much of a difference there is between the manually etched or acid only etched part.
