Single use paint gun

I have a Harbor Freight HVLP paint gun. I belong to their Insiders Club and if you watch the sales, you can get one for about $15. After I finished painting today, I spent 45 minutes or an hour cleaning the gun up for future use. How much is time and agrivation worth?? I would gladly pay anyone more than $15 to clean up the gun so I don't have to. I'm thinking about just throwing it away next time and get a new one. Kinda like when I worked at Kent Feeds and the annual clean up and paint time came around. They bought cheap $1 paint brushes and then paid guys $15-20/ hour to clean them up good so they could be reused.

I have had my granddaughter painting a 6' high fence and some landscape timbers with an oil base barn red paint.
Each day the brush, roller and paint pan liner all go into a plastic bag to go to trash. The stir sticks get saved for the fire pit. LOL

Yep, chuck it. $10 worth of solvent + your time! Not worth cleaning. I throw those away. I clean my Binks, Iwata and Sharp.

When those paint guns are on sale here, they're $9.99
I run some lacquer thinner through them to clean them up to use
again the next day. Then I'll try it again. If they set to long and no
longer work correctly, I simply pitch them and buy another one.

They work fine for the price, but I can't buy replacement parts for them.
And really, at $10, the parts would be more than a new one. So...
I guess I'm adapting to the "throw away world" when it comes to those.

I do have expensive paint guns to paint cars with, but that's another story.
I have also painted cars and trucks with the $10 ones. Here's one of them.

Use a paint roller. Its not a porch, it's a Mercedes. There is a story here.

Another option, if you are not through with that color, partially disassemble the gun and submerge it in thinner.

The cup can be covered with Saran wrap and a rubber band, put in the refrigerator for a couple days.

Then when ready for the next coat, just shake it out, blow some air through it, ready to go!

I got one of those to paint my 8N for the same reason. I re-used the gun but bought a pack of the disposable paint cups which greatly helps clean up.

What's the story?? I knew a guy that painted his 68 Chevy Ford tractor blue with a paint brush.
Somebody paint their car with a paint roller??

One version of the painting the porch story.

A blonde teenager, wanting to earn some extra money for the summer,
decided to hire herself out as a 'handy-woman' and started canvassing a nearby
well-to-do neighborhood. She went to the front door of the first house,
and asked the owner if he had any odd jobs for her to do.

'Well, I guess I could use somebody to paint my porch,' he said, 'How
much will you charge me?'

Delighted, the girl quickly responded, 'How about $50?'


The man agreed and told her that the paint brushes and everything she
would need was in the garage. The man's wife, hearing the conversation said to her
husband, 'Does she realize that our porch goes ALL the way around the house?'

He responded, 'That's a bit cynical, isn't it?'

The wife replied, 'You're right. I guess I'm starting to believe all those
dumb blonde jokes we've been getting by e-mail lately.'

Later that day, the blonde came to the door to collect her money. 'You're
finished already?' the startled husband asked.


'Yes, the blonde replied, and I even had paint left over, so I gave it two coats.'


Impressed, the man reached into his pocket for the $50.00 and handed it
to her along with a ten dollar tip.

'And by the way,' the blonde added, 'it's not a Porche, it's a Mercedes Benz.'

I watch HF for the sales and stock up on the paint guns. I use them on metal handrails, gates, etc. I run thinner or acetone, depends on paint used, through it when done. After a couple of times I just get a new one off the shelve.

Your Dodge looks good Royce--I agree with the way clean you paint gun--A pint of gas and a old paint brush work good for me. Use about 4 oz. at a time and swish it around and run it through--use the brush to clean the outside--pretty simple--had a $9.98 HF for years---Tee

Unless you are spraying latex paint you may be going overboard with cleaning it. With most paints you can just put a little solvent in the gun and just spray the solvent, shake the gun and pore out what you don't spray. Lacquer thinner works pretty good for most everything. The solvent is even re-usable, if you pour it into a jar or another can all the gunk goes to the bottom and usually in a couple weeks there is just clear solvent on top. Latex though if you clean the gun right after using it flush a lot of water through the gun and then wash it again with lacquer thinner. Once in a great while you have to take a gun apart to clean it. Usually the only time I take a gun apart is when I forget and leave paint in it for months.

LOL, that was a good one. That is funnier than the first woman I hired. I had a furniture refinishing shop and hired this woman to spray the finish on some tables. I was in the paint shop setting up the sprayer to get her started when the phone rang. Told her to hang loose I would be back in a few minutes. When I came back she had the sprayer trying to finish the tables pumping the trigger as hard as she could like it was a bottle of windex. She didn't know it had to be connected to compressed air.

I suppose if you are using extra cups, just keep a cup with thinner in it all the time and put it on the gun and spray still you get clean spray. Spray into the cup with the paint residue if you want to clean it. With a gravity sprayer I would try using a piece of seran wrap or a plastic baggie of the right size as a liner for the cup and let the cup threads seal it.

Here I thought they're a lot easier to clean up than the syphon guns.

How many times here on YT have we flamed our 'throwaway society' ..... be it consumers or those that manufacture products? I'm surprised at the replies to chuck the gun, on the other hand to some it is the easiest way to deal with it to save time and a bit of solvent. If it worked OK, I'd suck it up and clean it.