Need Ideas

I have 10 sets of 2 foot numbers (0-9). 10 1's 10 2's etc. I've painted 325 (3) number stencils as in 345 346 347 etc. I've got about that many left to do. My question is: What is the best way to keep the wet stencils separated. I have two carts with two 2x4's on each cart and a sheet of plywood on the 2x4's. The problem is when you start picking up the stencils, they are still wet. This is a 4 man operation. Thanks in advance!!

Sounds like you are using latex. Alkyd flashes much faster.

No, I'm using oil base. But, when you go thru a series of 551 552 553 554 555 556 etc it doesn't have time to flash because the numbers are used so fast.

When you pick them up stack them wet side to wet side ... is that what you mean?

Paint slower, use less paint, use a smaller tip and get less on stencil, Wipe paint off on old piece of carpet. add paint dryer to paint so it can dry faster. Paint in the sunshine, I just wish I had your problem. it is still raining here.

Wend and Dwan, The problem with wet side to wet side and using carpet is that the paint gets on the edges and narrows the stroke. Also, we have painted a black back ground for a good contrast. The excess paint on the inside of the stencils would transfer to the black making it look unprofessional. Thanks a lot for the ideas. They are great but, but I don't think they would work in this particular situation. Keep the ideas coming!!

I use old bath towels. My friend gets the old ones from a place he works. We use alot of them but it keeps the job moving.

sorry Rock thought you meant for stacking in the crate at the end of the day when your too knacked to clean em off. !! We do a lot of numbers here what your doing is pretty common for us.You have a four man team which makes light of the work load. If I had only single sets of numbers as you do I would have 2 dedicated runners and one dedicated bloke on the end of a scraper. If you were spraying 556 557 I would have the runner slightly over lapping the 55 making it easy to pick up and move it over to the next space where the single number i.e the 8 would be spaced in the right position, you should get at least five sprays ( i use a 419 with c/r) at the end of the five spaces the runner should have a new clean set of stencils waiting for you. You have plenty of stencils there for this to work. If I'm spraying I hate stopping the lads are running like mad to keep up they have to have the stencil there ready for spraying by the time I reach then next space. Hope this helps

Rock.. We do a ton of the same work, but usually with 6" or 12". With 10 sets it seems like you would have enough to keep the operation going without having to clean them. If we have that many to do we make sure we only make one pass on each stencil ie. no overlap by doing a 8 half and half. If you use the right tip you should be able to do it that way too. When you come to the double numbers like 551, 552, 553, I would only use 6 of the numbers for the 55 part and when those are done just let them sit there and use the other 4 for a while until the 6 dry enough to use, which should only take a little while. When we do a similar type of job, one guy lays out ALL the numbers down the row of spaces. That way we make sure that we use all the numbers and the ones that have been painted on can sit for the maximum time to dry. Then we it gets to be that most of the numbers are behind us, we go pick them all up and start again. Yes we have to bring some numbers with us as we go, but that is only a few, and we let them sit when we are done with the multiples. We try to do the numbers first so they can dry while doing other things till we are finished. At the end of the day, we spread out all the numbers in the trailer to dry. Since we only use 5 sets of 12" numbers we can lay them all over the trailer. That might be hard to do with 100 24" numbers so I would invent some kind of rack. Like maybe a couple 2 X 4's with notches in them 1" apart and line them up on the boards. Hopefully you don't have to do that many on back to back days. If so, they probably wont dry overnight. Also I have found that if your too rough cleaning them (like with scrapers) they become harder to clean. New stencils that haven't even dried all the way will peal right off. Good luck.