Fall 2023 Showcase: Fuji Q5 Platinum

Well, George, one of the number one questions we get at WWGO A is how can I get a professional looking finish? And you've encouraged me to not be afraid of spring. And I have taken those steps and, and, uh, learned that it is not as challenging as I thought it might be. Uh, but you have certainly been a big advocate of, of spray finishes. I have in ditto for me all around.

You can't beat a turbine, self-contained air supply HB LP gun. The Fuji system is really something. I don't think we're gonna argue about the idea that it's hard to beat a Turban based HB LP system to get a really high quality finish. No doubt about it. It's absolutely the way to go.

You've convinced me of that. I have started down that journey myself and I have found that the learning curve is not as steep as I thought it was. The results are dramatic and it's, it's a very impressive way to lay down a finish. And it's, you know, it's a little cliche except it's true that there's no faster way to ruin a project. You have many, many, many, many hours in than by doing a bad job of finishing.

So true. Um You, you can just undo in minutes what you spent hours trying to make. Right? So a couple things here. Um One of the things I really like about this Fuji system is with the turban on here and it's, you know, think of a dimmer switch on the light in your dining room.

That's what's happening here. So using that I can control the speed of the turbine, which means as I'm spraying different fluids from Shellac, which is like water. You know, it's super, super thin up to latex paint, which is super, super thick. It gives me the control. I need to make sure I'm getting the air I need so that I can get a good that that's a big differentiator and that level of control just across the system is really because it's you, you can never set it up the same for two different applications.

Everything changes temperature, humidity, the the the viscosity of the finish, everything changes. So you have the ability to dial it in is critical, the controls here plus the controls on the gun. So we have broken this down a couple of steps further in the video. I love being able to spray my finishes because I get such a good finish from spraying my finishes and it also makes it so much easier to apply them. I'm a huge fan of the Fuji system.

This is the Q five. So it's important to understand we're HV LP, high volume, low pressure. Also, this is a turbine that's providing the air to the gun. So we can compare that to a compressor, which is, we don't need a compressor. What I love about the turbine is it gives me clean air.

I don't have to worry about any moisture or oil being in the air that the turbine provides. Additionally, it gives me really, really good control over being able to put on the perfect finish because of course, I, if I'm spraying Shellac or I'm spraying Lacquer or I'm spraying polyurethane. Those are all variables that change the way I set everything up. So one of the things that's great about the Q five is that it's got a variable speed on it. So I can do this.

That's low and that's high that changes it from 6.5 to 9.9 to 0.5 P si. So that lets you dial it in which is primarily based on the viscosity of what it is. You're spraying. One of the things I didn't mention in my list of finishes was paint. Yes, you can spare, spray paint with the system as well.

I've done it a gazillion times. What's great about this unit is it runs really quietly and it's also got heat dissipation to it. So, um, quiet is great anytime you're running anything in your shop and that ability to drive heat away has many, many, many different positive effects on the unit and also on your ability to spray. So just to show you how well this works, I'm gonna get the gun set up with a finish and we are going to spray this really beautiful piece of quarter on White oak. I love the results.

It is so great to be able to spray finishes, get that quality of finish and the control that we get from using the Q five. Well, George, we had a question come in about really what is HV LP. I know it stands for high volume, low pressure. That's the only kind of spray gun that I've used. Maybe you could compare it to other kinds of spray guns.

So, yeah. HV. LP, like Paul said, high volume, low pressure and what that does is high volume. It gives us a lot of air flow but low pressure. So if you're running a compressor, you're probably running a spray gun.

This is, um, I think 6.5 to 9.5 P si or something like that. It was in the video that you just watched, um, with a spray gun that's connected to an air compressor. You're gonna be running significantly higher than that. And one of the by-product, the, the most common by-product of that is lots and lots and lots of overspray. So the day that you spray Lacquer on your bookshelf, um, you're kind of also lacquering your table saw and your joiner, you know, any anything else that's in the space where that overspray might land.

So the big gain for me when I switched from a conventional sprayer to the HB LP system was um significantly reducing overspray. Um I am not masking off or like laying plastic on anything else in my shop when I use the gun to spray like you just saw in the video. Um And then the other important point is with the turbine, in this case, um the turbine is providing air rather than a compressor, providing air. So this is what we would call clean air. There's no humidity in this, there's no oil in this.

So as a result, I'm not um pushing that stuff into my finish and adversely affecting, seems like there would be a lot of cost savings with less over spray as well. That's, that's pretty expensive products going where you want the product. Yeah. Yeah. Um because I'm so proud of it.

I wanted to make sure that we talk about. We point out this is the finished white Oak table, completely finished white oak table that you saw in that video. And a again, it's Paul and I talking about achieving a high quality finish when you get that low glancing look across this, that nice mirror, like finish, very smooth, very consistent even mill across the board there. Literally. Um That's really what we're talking about with, with trying to hit a good quality finish.

If you go to a furniture showroom and you see that kind of lustrous, just perfect sheen. That's fun to touch. That's how it's done. Very tactical.