# spraying varnish



## bourbon (4 Dec 2020)

Hi All, I have some Ronseal interior water based wood varnish. I want to spray this onto some small projects. Any Idea what to thin it with please. I have e-mailed Ronseal, but no reply after week. Thanks all.


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## Setch (4 Dec 2020)

Water.


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## sometimewoodworker (4 Dec 2020)

bourbon said:


> Hi All, I have some Ronseal interior water based wood varnish. I want to spray this onto some small projects. Any Idea what to thin it with please. I have e-mailed Ronseal, but no reply after week. Thanks all.


As above, also the maximum added water is 10% or less.


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## Droogs (4 Dec 2020)

If you have hard water then fillter it first. the lime can cause problems later


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## bourbon (4 Dec 2020)

Thanks for all of the replies. The reason I posted was that I was thinning acrylic water based paint with water and it was splitting. Someone on another forum suggested IPA and water and it worked without splitting, but I'm unsure weather it will work with varnish


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## Snettymakes (4 Dec 2020)

bourbon said:


> Hi All, I have some Ronseal interior water based wood varnish. I want to spray this onto some small projects. Any Idea what to thin it with please. I have e-mailed Ronseal, but no reply after week. Thanks all.



ive sprayed thatRonseal interior water based wood varnish. Ive thinned with water, and just as it comes, worked fine.


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## sometimewoodworker (5 Dec 2020)

Droogs said:


> If you have hard water then fillter it first. the lime can cause problems later


Regular Filtering has zero effect on hard water as it only catches crunchy bits.


bourbon said:


> The reason I posted was that I was thinning acrylic water based paint with water and it was splitting.


acrylic paint is extremely different from varnish and requires a different tip & needle set together with different gun pressures, so there is no comparison between the 2.

here are a couple of pieces I’ve just finished, they are water based acrylic colour with a water based polyurethane (though the water based varnish is precisely the same)


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## rafezetter (5 Dec 2020)

Just water is fine though you could add a dash of Floetrol to keep it open longer, which also has a thinning action - water based paints and varnishes can make spraying harder because of significantly faster drying times and takes a bit of practice to get the pressure and consistency just right so you don't get spattering from the varnish / paint drying before it hits the object.

There's also the old trick of a dash of washing up liquid in the water (a few drops at most), which helps break the surface tension of the paint so it flows better - but for a beginner floetrol is safer.


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## bourbon (5 Dec 2020)

This is what I'm spraying with. Not Ideal, but it was cheap, and my compressor only has a small tank on it.


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