Worlds cheapest spray booth

[flatpack]

Gents
I’ve got fed up with spraying undercoat onto individual figures, outside, on top of my wheelie bin, and getting the paint everywhere.
After doing some research into turn tables, I discovered an item called a lazy Susan from ikea.
It’s a wooden turntable for serving food and only costs about £6, but I’ve employed it, with a broken fold down crate, and some thick cardboard, to make a paint booth.
I use it in my garage as it’s cold in the UK at this time of year, and this allows the smells to disappear.
See what you think ?

[Connectamabob]

It won't be safer than spraying outside, unfortunately. It's not actually a spray booth, just a baffle to keep crossbreezes out and contain some of the overspray. Without ventilation though, you'll still be filling your local air with paint particles and solvents. Some will be caught by the cardboard, but not nearly as much as you think.

Real ventilated spray booths aren't that hard to DIY, so I don't think I'd recommend something like this even on a frugality basis, unfortunately. That said, a lot of the DIY spray booths you see out there are so underpowered as to be basically similar to this in terms of actual safety. Gotta do your CFM maths to make an actual fit-for-purpose booth, not just grab whatever bathroom or computer fan was cheapest on Amazon.

Don't mean to be a downer. I get that having put this together on such a tiny budget feels good. But unfortunately if your main yardstick is how cheap you can make it, and you don't understand the principles, it is REALLY easy to make something that strokes the "satisfying accomplishment" bit of the brain while being unfit for purpose in practical reality.

[has.been]

I like it, and it does get cold &/or wet in the UK this time of year.
Yes it does not extract fumes, it is not much better than being in the back yard, BUT it is drier AND (a bit) warmer.
I have never had good results with spraying anyway (especially this time of year) so I tend to brush on my undercoat(s),
besides my wife uses her lazy Susan for its intended purpose. so I will stick to the brush, for now at least.

[Connectamabob]

I like it, and it does get cold &/or wet in the UK this time of year.
Yes it does not extract fumes, it is not much better than being in the back yard, BUT it is drier AND (a bit) warmer.

Better than the wet/cold backyard for the paint, but worse for your health. Indoors without ventilation you're hotboxing yourself with that stuff.

As I get into middle age proper, I've had little health issues show up here and there that are attributable to incautious hobby activity in my earlier decades. I can only hope that I stopped being footloose about safety early enough that these things will remain little. These days I cringe when I see people handwaving the same kinda stuff my younger self did. Don't cut corners with safety. Stuff that seems too minor to even notice in the moment really does tally up eventually. Like the incubation period for a disease, the damage happens long before you feel it, so don't judge your safety by what you see, smell, or feel in the moment.

I have never had good results with spraying anyway (especially this time of year) so I tend to brush on my undercoat(s)

Ah, that's one of the selling points of an airbrush. Wonderfull smooth spray undercoats you could never approach with either a rattlecan or a hairy brush. Always hateted rattlecans for how tempermental they could be, and how hard it was to get even coverage on complex uneven topographies (impossible to get the crevices without overspraying the high points).

[Captain Blood]

I like it. Great idea to use the lazy Susan 
You’re using the best primer too 

[Connectamabob]

*Cringes*

[beefcake]

I never thought of using a lazy susan. I just tended to move around my minis. Off to aliexpress to find one now.

[carlos marighela]

If hobby practices are presenting themselves as identifiable health issues, I'd recommend taking up smoking, the odd bout of heavy drinking and keeping the company of louche women to put things into perspective. Either that or stop chewing your toy soldiers. You know if somethings going to kill you, you might as well make it as enjoyable as possible.

Me? I spray mine outside on an MDF place mat but I'm fortunate in having a typically more temperate climate, that permits such for most of the year. I'm sure an OH&S manager would view such practices dimly but I'm not fussed.

[Connectamabob]

Or you could observe basic saftey and have both your hobby fun AND your health. Nothing about the hobby reqires you to do any of it unsafely in order to do it at all.

Even if it is a money thing, were're not talking about alot. You can buy a hobby spray booth for under a hundred bucks, build one or even just buy a paint resperator for a third of that. How many minis is that? How many cans of paint? Is it really such a big goddamn burden to not buy new lead for a month so you can elimate potential serious health worries later? How much is ten years off the end of you life worth, in cash terms? How about twenty? Does that value significantly change if it's a "only" a 1 in 3 chance instead of a certianty? What if instead of dying earlier it just makes life shittier earlier? Prevents you from enjoying life to the fullest, like, y'know, was your excuse for wanting to YOLO past basic safety stuff that wouldn't have prevented you from doing that stuff anyway.

I get that you just want to ride worry free, but that doesn't make hyperbolic strawman BSing smarter. It makes it dumber. I'm not talking about "chewing on your toy soldiers", I'm talking about the exact basic stuff shown here that people try to justify with laziness, over-cheapness, and "my daddy smoked all his life, and he didn't get cancer" style bad logic. Spraying paint into your breathing air. Filing and sanding without dust management. Basic stupid shit you see people doing all the time 'cause they think it's too small to hurt them.

But for that matter, you joke about not chewing on minis, but I regularly see people here talking about sticking their paintbrushes and sculpting tools in their mouth. Tools covered in endocrine disruptors, heavy metal based pigments, allergy sensitizers and other other such candy. I'm sure I'll get a few people telling me how that's just fine too, because they do it all the time, and they aren't sick yet, so clearly they never will be. Or because their freind has been doing it their whole life and is still allegedly OK (they might not actually be, but even if they are, it's the same kind of statistical gamble as smoking, so them being OK doesn't mean it's safe in general). People are REALLY REALLY GOOD at telling themselves ANYTHING is harmless if it's something they don't want to be bothered avoiding or changing.

I feel like a parent trying to get their kid to not do a stupid thing by telling them about how I did the same stupid thing when I was their age. But instead of learning from my mistakes, they think "So it was okay for you to do not but not me? You hypocrite!" and storm off doubly comitted to doing the stupid thing. They can't see the stupidity of the stupid thing, because they're immortal, and just wanting to do something counts as evidence that the thing must be a good idea, so clearly anyone saying it's not must be dumb.

[carlos marighela]

Thanks Dad!

[flatpack]

Oh the fun of toy solders.
Maybe next time, I’ll keep my ideas to myself.

[ork56]

As to health issues, I have noticed a very marked difference in approach/perception between EU and US posters (esp California) I don't know if it's due to being better informed or a result of the 'everything goes you cancer' stance.

As to H&S concerns, a decent mask would be a better simpler solution?

Lazy Susan is v useful, wish I could find the one I bought, but I think I threw it out still in the box..... Maybe it was the fumes that got me?

[Connectamabob]

Oh the fun of toy solders.
Maybe next time, I’ll keep my ideas to myself.

By all means, do share ideas! If they're good ideas, then you're the good guy helping the community out. If they're problematic ideas, then you'll find out the good way, which is ASAP, as opposed to the bad way, which is from a serious-faced doctor in 20 years.

This is not about ragging on you or anyone for trying to find or share new ideas. Trying to find new ideas is very, very good. This is just about trying to prevent safety issues. It's just unavoidable nature that not all ideas will turn out to be as good as they first seemed, and peer review is a helping thing, not an insult.

[Connectamabob]

As to health issues, I have noticed a very marked difference in approach/perception between EU and US posters (esp California) I don't know if it's due to being better informed or a result of the 'everything goes you cancer' stance.

As to H&S concerns, a decent mask would be a better simpler solution?

Lazy Susan is v useful, wish I could find the one I bought, but I think I threw it out still in the box..... Maybe it was the fumes that got me?

This isn't a regional thing. This is an amateur/layman thing. Show this stuff to someone who works in a professional paint shop pretty much anywhere in the first world, and you'll find out that how seriously the people who actually know about this stuff professionally take it compared to hobbyists. It's not a "sometimes causes cancer in mice if you force feed them unrealistically huge amounts, but only in California" thing, it's a "people who do this for a living often don't live to see old age, even with proper safety" thing.

Amatures tend to be willfully under informed. They don't read the MSDS, and most of the time they don't even know the basic difference between different types of paints, solvents, glues, resins etc. Yet they will still eagerly form very confident opinions about the exact things they know that they know almost nothing about. They have no idea what's in that paint, but they'll happily assume it's all safe by default, and even try to argue with people who they know do know what's in it. When told something they're playing with can be dangerous if misused, they'll scoff and deny it, or try to shift the goalposts for misuse to exclude what they're doing, regardless of what that is. Even when the science and statistics are spelled out for them. Because it's not really about what's true. It's about not wanting to have ones toys taken away. It's about not wanting to do extra work, or pay for extra stuff, or wear uncomfortable gear, or anything else they don't want. It's about trying to shape reality by belief instead of the other way around.

[Munindk]

If the intent of your spray booth was to stop getting paint on things around the mini, its a very nice idea. Unlike my "cardboard box with top and a side cut off" it looks like its very easy to store in a small space.

Regarding the safety issue I'll confess that I dont know how toxix spraypainting is, but given the small amounts of spraying most hobbyists do, wouldnt a decent mask be enough to protect you?
And possibly more cost efficient and/or appropriate an real ventilated spray booth?