Paint can warmer

[DynaGlide]

I was reading this article: https://bloggingpainters.com/sherwin-williams-kem-aqua-plus/

and in the pictures he shows some sort of GE warming thing that looks like a nice idea for warming paint cans for spraying:

Any idea what it is? It looks like a coffee pot warmer from a restaurant. Would this work well?

 

[Packard]

For sale at a thrift shop:

Sold at auction for $8.00.
https://www.shopgoodwill.com/Item/73263440

I'm just not sure it is a good idea to heat paints.  Especially oil based or shellac based paints.

 

[AlexThePalex]

It's just a hot plate.

I don't really get the idea of warming up your paint. I've sprayed so many different things in my life, in different ways, I never heated anything up.

 

[Ron B]

I worked at a truck manufacturing factory and back in the 1990's the EPA (United States) tightened the VOC so much that we could not really thin the paint enough to properly spray it. Instead we heated the paint to thin to allow us to spray it.  The paint we were spraying was Dupont Imron, which is an two part enamel.  The VOCs were the limiting factor at that time on how high our production could run, so we tried a lot of tricks. 

 

[montyss]

The Higher the Temp of the paint the lower the Viscosity. Normal temp for spray paint application is 72 deg f
Hot plate probably not a good idea for warming it up.. bad things may happen

 

[Mini Me]

My father used to put the paint tin in a bigger can of boiling water when hand painting to help it level off easier and reduce the visible brush marks.

 

[rst]

heating blankets are cheap and safer

 

[Alanbach]

Just come to where I live in SE Texas, you won’t need your hot plate. Just use my driveway.

 

[Bob D.]

Just come to where I live in SE Texas, you won’t need your hot plate. Just use my driveway.

I measured my concrete patio the other day and it was 123F in direct sunlight. That's in NJ
so I can't imagine what TX or FL are like.

 

[dashboardpws]

Take a look at seed mats. These are rectangular, square, and round in various sizes. They're thin, use very little power ~14-18W, and only warm things around 10 degrees F above ambient. I have particular experience using them on a long term basis since my wife and I got into brewing our own kombucha. I built a number of Kombuchambers™, which are simply insulated boxes with passive ventilation and thermostats that maintain a particular temperature for the fermentation. The thermostat goes into a small jar of water that's kept inside the box so it measures liquid rather than air temperature. Works very well and I expect would also work nicely for paint.

 

[leakyroof]

Other than making sure the paint doesn't get,,, too warm, the other issue is that what ever you've painting needs to be warm as well. It won't help if you've warmed up the paint but the object to paint is ice cold compared to the paint.

 

[xedos]

Fellas - the "paint" in question is KemAqua+.

It's waterbased and seems to have it's own set of peculiarities one of which is the temp. 

I live in GA where it gets plenty hot (and cold) and some day even when the temps outside are 70ish and the inside temp is too - the KA+ just sprays better when its warmed a bit.  Other days it behaves just fine.  I'm not smart or experienced enough to tell you why this is. But trust me, it is sometimes the case.  I don't spray enough to spend a lot of time (any really) to figure out why and implement a solution other than just warm the paint a bit when it needs it.

I use a single hot plate and don't worry one bit about fire.    Now, I wouldn't put that butyl celloslove on or near the heater. 

 

[sancho57]

Though I don’t live in a very cold climate. I never needed more than a qt of finish to spray at a time.
I just simply got some hot water in a large container maybe a bucket and set the qt in it to warm the finish.