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So in this video I want to share a little trick that I use for mixing paint products
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I don't always use this. Sometimes, as with urethane, say for instance
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there's not a whole lot to mix up, so I'll just mix it with a stir stick
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But with some paints, and especially wood stains, there's a case to be made for power mixing
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which is what I'm going to show you here. So I've got a can of some brown stuff. I really like this color for staining
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Let me just show you the problem. So I mean it looks brown enough, right, when you're looking at it
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but the problem with stains is, oh boy, they often build up, look at that
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They often build up solids on the bottom, and that's where the color comes from, or some of the color
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And it's very important that that whole thing be mixed, that there isn't anything left on the bottom
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because you're not going to get the kind of coloring action that you want, if that's there
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Now, I could mix this so that it's homogenous with just this stir stick
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The problem is, it's going to take me a long time, and there's a very good chance that I'm not actually going to mix it as thoroughly as I should
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So that's where this comes in. This is my paint mixing paddle
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And once upon a time, it used to be one of these. It used to be a spade bit
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But I retired it, or rather reassigned it, for another job. I ground off, you can see I ground off most of the spur, because if the spur is long, I can't get to the bottom of the paint can
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So I ground off most of it, and I just use that one for all kinds of paint
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Sometimes house paint, sometimes stain, sometimes some outdoor wood finishes. So, I'm just going to put it in. Now, there's a couple of things I've got to warn you about here
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If you have this thing set to go really fast, well, chances are excellent, whatever you're stirring is going to come flying out
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So you want to be careful. You don't want to rev it up too much. You don't really need to
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And you want to make sure you're... it's really the bottom that we're working on
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That's where all the stuff has developed, all the sediment. So we want to get it right down to the bottom
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So, as you're going to see, I'm going to rotate it around the can, sort of move it back and forth, cover all the areas
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Then I'm also going to reverse the rotation and spin it the other way, just to make things a little more mixed
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But it's really a pretty simple process. Now, what I want you to look at here is how the appearance of this stain changes
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Because right now, it looks like black coffee, which is darker than the stain is supposed to be
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And that's because all the good stuff is at the bottom. But as I mix..
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We're starting to see some lighter brown come up. You see that
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So I'm going around in a circle to make sure I get all the stuff on the bottom, and then I go back and forth
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I'm also going up and down a little bit, to pull that lighter stuff up from the bottom
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Now, this mixing, as you can see, it's not happening immediately, even with this power tool
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So you can get a sense of how long it would take to mix thoroughly by hand, just with a stick
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I'm going to reverse rotation a bit. I'm not sure that that helps, but I'm kind of thinking it might. It can't hurt
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Now that looks pretty even to me. Now that's pretty even, and it's ready to go
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Now, I would normally be doing this right before I'm staining. So I would have a brush and a rag, and I would clean this off, and then use some of that on the wood that I'm going to be staining
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But it gives you the idea. And power mixing like this really helps with a lot of different finishing substances that you're likely to use
