Good electric paint shaker

[Bennylava]

Is there an inexpensive corded one? Not pneumatic, just 120v. I'm sure they go up to thousands of dollars for autobody shops, but it's not really something I want to spend a ton on. It just doesn't seem like it should cost that much. An electric motor attached to some clamps for the can. And the clamp should do everything from little pints to rattle cans to gallons.

 

[disston]

About 30 years ago I found on the street a bunch of industrial paint shakers. Apparently some large paint store was being closed. I told a guy that owned an auto repair and paint shop about them thinking he might use one. He said forget it. More trouble than it was worth. These were big 240 volts machines I think.

So I don't know why I thought this might be relevant to your quest but I can tell you that my paint shop owner friend has his guys mix the paint with a stick. If you buy paint that the store mixed it is still mixed, I think that's the deal.

How much paint you gotta mix?

 

[dnschmidt]

Blair makes one called the Tornado II that's not bad. https://www.blairequipment.com/paint-shaker Mostly useable for quarts but if you bolt it down to a bench it can handle gallons. I have one of these as well as an ASTRO pneumatic shaker which I have bolted to my concrete garage floor and believe me it needs to be as it will move any table that it might be bolted to that not itself is bolted down to the floor. The hot setup is a course a Red Devil or equivalent but these are thousands of dollars. I LOVE HAVING PAINT SHAKERS THEY ARE SO MUCH BETTER THAN trying to stir primer. The coolest use I have for them is when I open up a new can of shaving cream. Instead of shaking it in my hand forever I just put it on the shaker and a minute later I've got the best shaken can of Foamy ever. Also, great for spray cans.

 

[autobon7]

Blair makes one called the Tornado II that's not bad. https://www.blairequipment.com/paint-shaker Mostly useable for quarts but if you bolt it down to a bench it can handle gallons. I have one of these as well as an ASTRO pneumatic shaker which I have bolted to my concrete garage floor and believe me it needs to be as it will move any table that it might be bolted to that not itself is bolted down to the floor. The hot setup is a course a Red Devil or equivalent but these are thousands of dollars. I LOVE HAVING PAINT SHAKERS THEY ARE SO MUCH BETTER THAN trying to stir primer. The coolest use I have for them is when I open up a new can of shaving cream. Instead of shaking it in my hand forever I just put it on the shaker and a minute later I've got the best shaken can of Foamy ever. Also, great for spray cans.

How much for the Blair?

 

[dnschmidt]

Beats me. I bought mine at least 15 years ago. Just look it up.

 

[K13]

How much for the Blair?

Blair PAINT SHAKER-TORNADO II (120V) 51000

Tornado II Paint Shaker (115V)

www.eastwood.com

 

[Sumboodie]

The Blair unit is $400-600 from what I'm seeing.

An air unit is around $175.

 

[Bennylava]

Red Devil

So I don't know why I thought this might be relevant to your quest but I can tell you that my paint shop owner friend has his guys mix the paint with a stick. If you buy paint that the store mixed it is still mixed, I think that's the deal.

How much paint you gotta mix?

You underestimate how powerful my desire is to just push buttons and have stuff happen.

I wish I would have found those machines I would've kept them. Well one of them anyway. Who knew paint shakers would be so expensive? Looks like a project that I... won't do myself. I'd probably just end up repainting my walls involuntarily. Still though, seems like it should be simple enough.

An electric motor. 2 gears. A pedestal. A couple of clamps. It doesn't have to go super fast, it just needs to lazily swirl the paint around. You can come back in an hour.

 

[mike93lx]

No love for the simplicity of mixing with a drill?

 

[Half-fast eddie]

No love for the simplicity of mixing with a drill?

 

[disston]

Red Devil


You underestimate how powerful my desire is to just push buttons and have stuff happen.

I wish I would have found those machines I would've kept them. Well one of them anyway. Who knew paint shakers would be so expensive? Looks like a project that I... won't do myself. I'd probably just end up repainting my walls involuntarily. Still though, seems like it should be simple enough.

An electric motor. 2 gears. A pedestal. A couple of clamps. It doesn't have to go super fast, it just needs to lazily swirl the paint around. You can come back in an hour.

Yeah. I would have kept one if I could also. Couldn't believe the body shop owner friend of mine wasn't interested. Still use him after more than 30 years to paint my work car.

 

[K13]

Red Devil


You underestimate how powerful my desire is to just push buttons and have stuff happen.

I wish I would have found those machines I would've kept them. Well one of them anyway. Who knew paint shakers would be so expensive? Looks like a project that I... won't do myself. I'd probably just end up repainting my walls involuntarily. Still though, seems like it should be simple enough.

An electric motor. 2 gears. A pedestal. A couple of clamps. It doesn't have to go super fast, it just needs to lazily swirl the paint around. You can come back in an hour.

There are a lot of paints that lazily swirling them around will not mix.

 

[rlitman]

The inexpensive ones are inexpensive for a reason. They'll shake the **** out of whatever they're bolted to.

Ancient beat up commercial ones can be had for a few hundred. Here's a great example on CL:

Harbil Paint Shaker Mixer - tools - by owner - sale

Harbil Paint Mixer. Shakes gallon and quarts. Includes quart adapter. Good condition, strong motor.

jerseyshore.craigslist.org

I use a HF pneumatic I got on sale for about $70, and it works great, but it's really meant to be bolted to a concrete floor. I bolted it to the cast iron floor base of my standing drill press and it will shake a vise off the table and walk the machine across the floor if I didn't have it secured.

 

[930dreamer]

Look at pawn shops for a classic Red Devil paint shaker. I picked one up at an estate sale with a pile of vintage tools for $60.

 

[Bennylava]

Oh thank you for posting that... a laugh riot! My side hurts

 

[Steve_P]

I have the Astro one that's pneumatic. I bolt it to my welding table, which is on wheels, and it doesn't move it- it probably weighs 150-200 lb. If you let paint sit for a year or more my experience is that the Astro will not fully mix it, even if you leave it on the shaker for 30 minutes- the solids still stay on the bottom. So I've started to manually stir for a minute first to break up the worst of it. The Astro I have goes thru oil like crazy (it has an inline oiler) and it blows it on the table- it makes a mess on whatever it's attached to. It's not something I use often, and for the $ it's pretty good, and there's probably not anything better for the $, but it's definitely not ideal IMO.

 

[1whocares]

I just bought this one at a big swap meet near me, I saw it on a table, and I could hardly tell what it was, it was covered with paint as usual, I think it is an old Blair unit, I asked the guy if it worked and he just shrugged his shoulders, so I offered him 5 bucks for it and I thought I would take a chance, I got it home and plugged it in and it sounded good, the timer switch would hardly turn because of all the paint.I cleaned it up and put some paint on it and I am very happy with it although it is for quarts and pints, but that is mostly what I use, I don't know how old it is, but it works for me, it has springs as feet on the bottom and it does not walk on my steel bench.

 

[LopezBart]

For quart cans, I just shake them by hand and call it exercise; once you've used a bit of the can it mixes more easily. Gallons get shaken at the store. Marine anti-fouling paint separates quickly (heavy copper drops out), so those get the drill treatment (multiple times/day).

 

[Vinny]

Been a while since I used auto paint, but I recall you only want to stir it, not shake it?

 

[rlitman]

Been a while since I used auto paint, but I recall you only want to stir it, not shake it?

That would depend on the product. A gloss clear finish should never need shaking, because it has no solids that can settle out. Stirring may or many not sufficiently re-suspend settled solids in everything else. Shaking always brings them back into suspension, but can create micro-bubbles that may be their own problem in some finishes. YMMV.

 

[Steve_P]

Been a while since I used auto paint, but I recall you only want to stir it, not shake it?

IME, it's standard that if you have auto paint mixed to match a factory color that they shake it for you before you leave the store- so it's thoroughly blended and you don't come back in two days and complain it doesn't match after you didn't thoroughly mix it. Same with a factory can of primer, or at least they will ask, because it has typically been sitting for a few months and it settles. The color bank does use a stirring system because it's a time saver when you have multiple tints that are used for a factory formula. Again, IME.

 

[dnschmidt]

Every body shop in the world uses a pneumatic paint shaker. When Sherwin-Williams switched out my best friends shop from PPG to Sherwin-Williams (a good move by the way) they included the paint shaker along with the mixing bank. The only thing you don't shake is normal high gloss clear. Matte clear, basecoat, sealer and primer are all routinely shaken. Think about it. You're spraying the paint through a spray gun who's only purpose in life it to change a paint stream into a particle stream. Bubbles are a non-issue.

 

[dr_clyde]

The body shop I worked at years ago used the Blair Tornado paint shaker, it worked great.

Probably still using it today, almost 20 years later I bet.

 

[dnschmidt]

The body shop I worked at years ago used the Blair Tornado paint shaker, it worked great.

Probably still using it today, almost 20 years later I bet.

I have one too. The only downside is with gallons of primer. These tend to overload the Blair. For quarts it's the bomb.

 

[humber2]

Me and thousands of others stir paint with the screwdriver which has removed the lid.

YMMV

 

[930dreamer]

What about a vintage Red Devil shaker