Hey all, kind of a newbie here still, been reading posts here A LOT, and saw some neat tool ideas. Thought I'd post one that seems to work for me up here during the cold Deeeeetroit winters. If you are like me (cheap), heck if you just pay the bills, it sucks trying to keep a shop warm just to let paint dry. So, I came up with a little curing oven/booth that works really really well. It's a little crude, I have some wiring cleanup and cover plates to put on, but it's the prototype, and works awesome. When I have a few more projects out of the way, I'll jazz it up. Buying everything new (except for the hunk of plywood holding the lamp on), I think I have less than $80 into the whole thing. Sure an old electric oven would work, but this is much more portable. - Take one big storage tub, the bigger the better. -Cut a hole in the top, put in a heat lamp. I used a 250W bulb works good. -Wire the lamp, an electric baseboard heater thermostat, and a 12 hour timer switch in series. -Wrap the bin in insulation, I did 2 layers of the foil insulation, I think each layer is about R6. -As an option, get one of those digital thermometers, and drop it into the bin so you can get an inside reading. The one I had reads inside and outside temps, but the probe it the "outside", so It's set to outside temp to read oven temp. My tub is a 72 gallon tub. I think I got it at Lowe's or Walmart. If I really wanted to, I can drop a small block in there, but it's usually brackets, intakes... stuff like that. -When the shop's at 45 degrees, the heat lamp gets the oven to 80 degrees in less than 10 minutes. The thermostat keeps the temps from getting out of control, and lets me set whatever temp I wanna run. The timer will run for 12 hours, so I can paint something, and go to bed. It'll be ready in the morning. I usually turn it on with the bare part in there, as well as the paint I plan to use, and let them warm up. I take it out, shoot the paint, and put it back in to dry. I've used this for 3 winters now, and have had no "thermal incidents". I think there are still enough air leaks that the vapors don't build up, and the warmer temps inside the oven probably covect the vaporous air out. I just don't paint in the oven itself. A couple things I think it might benefit from is to get another tub to slip this one into. It'll protect most of the insulation and less prone to tear. To date, I have not had any tear issues. I thought of building this out of really thin sheet metal, or Luan with foam insulation, but the fab time and increased bulk made it prohibitive.
It does get warm, but even after at least 100 hours of curing time, not even any plastic creep. The lid has some structural ribs, and what you can't see is that I have a piece of plywood cut out to sandwich the lamp to the lid. That surely is helping. Also, the thermostat helps keep the temps in check, which is why I put it in the circuit. Here's the circuit
The Jalopy Journal
