The Paint Booth

 The Thrifty Rocketeer blog continues...

A recent photo posted in a rocketry forum demonstrated an enterprising rocketeer's conversion of a cabinet into a painting booth.  It was complete with a rotisserie turntable, and an evacuation fan for fumes and paint.

It was nice, if you had the vertical height to fit the "booth" into your basement.  Not all of us have that luxury.

It started me thinking, wondering how many rocketeers actually have a paint booth.

I would think that most low-power rocketeers don't bother with such a thing, but once you cross the threshold into mid or upper power rockets, the sheer square footage of your painting surface might make such an addition to your work shop very worthwhile.

Of course, those who live in the deep south, or outside of the northern climes, can paint outside pretty much year round.  But those of us in the snow belt, who have just seen our warm Fall temps drop from 70 degrees to the 30s & 40s, with overnights below freezing, don't have that option.

So, I decided to ask on a number of forums, how many of us have a paint booth.  The number and variety of responses surprised me.

There were some with formal, vented paint cabinets.  Some had  a makeshift U-haul wardrobe box set up.  A couple suggested repurposing smaller pop-up tents. And some used a box fan with a furnace filter to draw and trap overspray before spreading in their basement. 

For instance, some had purchased for $50 a paint tent, designed for just this purpose.  But others had repurposed a cannibis grow tent with grow light and vent fan...while others stole their kid's kiddie tent from the beach when it got soiled or dirty or ripped, and fashioned their own paint tent. 

Now, not too long ago, I had  constructed my own solder fume filter fan, for my budding interest in Ham Radio.  I got a pancake fan, a power supply and a couple of charcoal filters, and mounted them all in a cardboard shoebox, complete with a slide switch to turn it on.  The idea was that when on, the fan would draw the rosin-core smoke off the soldering pencil and through the porous filter.  It worked, but I found it was more trouble to set up than it was worth.

I eventually downsized to a smaller fan, and just went with a small plug-in fan to draw the fumes away.  I suppose that I could construct a similar fan in a larger cardboard box to create my own paint booth.

I heard from one fellow rocketeer who touted the paint booth that resides at their nearby rocket parts supplier/store.  That's a great idea, in support of a club that frequents the store, and is in their city.  Unfortunately, I am some 3 hours away, so that's not an option for me.

I'm wondering what other creative inventions you might have to address this need to paint inside during the cold winter months.  Given that the wife hates paint fumes, what might you try as a low cost solution?

The thrifty rocketeer would like to know...