Graco Magnum 257025 Project Painter Plus Paint Sprayer

I bought this last November so I could apply a stain to the new fence on our property that was destroyed in a wind storm. But, the wind and rain kept us from doing so until these past two weeks. In total we have painted 620 linear feet of 6' high fence made up of drill pipe, 2x4s and 1x6" 6' tall. That's a lot of fence to be painting. We still have another 300 feet to go. Our neighbor finally decided to fix the adjoining fence so now we have more to do. This Graco Magnum made the job easy and quick compared to rolling. we put our little generator in the back of our work trailer and pulled it with the lawn tractor to the back fence. Worked beautifully. Priming was extremely easy. Painting was a delight, if it can be. Using the supplied tip of 512, it was a very nice wide pattern and covered a lot of fence. Took a bit to figure out how far back I needed to be to keep from causing runs, drips and errors. At first I was about to eclipse Pete Rose's record of runs, Hits, and errors. LOL. Then I learned that about 12"-15" works best in light winds of 5-8mph. Any higher its best to wait till there's low winds. But clean up, now that was easy. Prime it with some mineral sprits, Then with the small buck full of MS, start spraying into an empty bucket till the nozzle sprays clear. Disassemble the intake screen and wash off in the MS and blow it off. Then take the nozzle apart and clean it. With the nozzle and screen clean I just put them in the slots in the feet of the sprayer for safe keeping. So was it worth the investment? Well, ask me that question after I paint the fences again next year. Im sure Ill be smiling just as much. I won't be conning anyone to do the painting like Tom Sawyer did. But right now I'd say that this spray is worth every single penny. Painting isn't fun but it has been made 1000 times easier with this little gem.

I made a little cart for this using some scrap wood and a mover's dolly that we already had. It holds the machine, a 2-gallon bucket of paint, and some tools and rags. Cut a hole in the top of your two-gallon bucket to slip the suction hose in so you don't have an open-top paint bucket sloshing around. Be sure to use the suction-hose filter. The machine is easy to use if you carefully read the extensive instructions several times beforehand. The extra set of paint-proof, water-proof laminated instructions is very nice. Then, fill up a bucket with clean water, and practice spraying with that. Get used to operating the power switch, priming it, PRESSURE RELIEF, locking the gun, and spraying with the water first. This will really help you to get more comfortable with the upcoming paint job, and you won't be fumbling around for the instructions. The little attachment on the end of the drain tube didn't make any sense - I removed mine. I sprayed 200 feet of five-foot-high concrete wall in two hours. It makes very little noise. It only runs when you are spraying. The spring in the gun handle is not overly stiff, and the gun itself operates very smoothly. They say you don't need to thin the paint, but the Behr Ultra Premium Exterior paint I used was so thick that it was close to a gel. I went ahead and thinned it with about 4-5 oz of filtered water per gallon of paint (they recommended a max of 8 oz per gallon). This made the paint a lot less like gel and much more like paint. Cleanup is made much easier by the fact you can use an included accessory to hook your garden hose into the suction tube and just let the water run through to flush it out. There is a small bottle of Pump Armor preservative included. One part of the directions say to dump the Pump Armor straight in the suction tube, but you will waste a lot this way. Instead, remove the suction tube and use the bottle of preservative and the included short vinyl tube to force the preservative up into the pump (instructions wrapped around the bottle). The negative things are the stiff hose, and the fact that the supplied gun does not have a swivel. No swivel between the gun and the stiff hose means you are constantly fighting with the hose a little. You can get pretty close to the coverage stated on the paint can with this thing. I figured I was getting 300 square feet per gallon, but I was painting very coarse pitted concrete, so painting a normal smooth wall should give you the full coverage of 400 square feet. I started off with the pressure set to full blast -- that was not necessary. Setting the pressure half to two-thirds of the way up used less paint, and produced less over-spray. The supplied tip is a 515, which is the biggest size you are supposed to use with this sprayer. It gives a fan that is 10-12" wide. The last amazing thing was that I didn't get any paint on me, my glasses, my shoes...anything! Cannot speak to reliability, but I cleaned the machine as well as I could and we will see what happens the next time I fire it up. Update 09-08-2023: Have now used it for three jobs without problems.

Love this sprayer. Great value, easy to use and clean.

Over the break I decided to paint the kitchen cabinets white. This is my first time doing this kind of work, so I had a lot to learn. Started off with the wrong paint and primer, resulting in orange peel that wasn't terrible ... but not the finish that I wanted. Finally got the right paint and primer, and the result was much better, but still had some orange peel albeit very small. Finally I opted to buy an airless paint sprayer. I watched a lot of videos online comparing the Graco handhelds to this one, and what drove me towards this one was that the handheld versions appeared to have a pulse to their spray. That looked like it would add complexity that I didn't want to deal with. I've now gotten two coats on the backs of the cabinet drawers and doors, and this works very quickly. So much faster than painting by hand! Results look good, though I had to dial the pressure up a bit until I was happy with it. Got a few drips on the first doors I painted. Few things to be aware of: - After priming the sprayer, it took a minute to realize that the pump only runs briefly when you're spraying - The sprayer hose is incredibly stiff and a little frustrating to deal with - I bought an FFLP310 (fine finish tip) from Graco and found that it needs a different base after I received it -- contacted Graco and the sales rep is helping, which I appreciate! But it feels like there's room to improve the design of the sprayer - As I painted, I accidentally pulled the suction hose up out of the paint, causing the pump to run continuously. Putting the end back into the paint didn't resolve the issue and the pump continued for minutes, even after I turned it off. Eventually I ran through the priming steps again and was able to resume painting Overall, using this is resulting in the finish that I wanted on my cabinets. For as many Youtube videos as I saw showing how you could achieve a really good finish with rollers and paint brushes, I just wasn't getting there. That said, this does feel a little bit like overkill for just repainting a single kitchen worth of cabinets.

Worked way better than I expected. Cleaning not too bad.

Works great, cleanup easy and overspray minimal. Spray pattern perfect and pressure. Used it painting the outside of my well house, workshop and garden shed with solid color stain. When it clogged followed directions and cleared it quickly. Easy to use and I used 1 gal cans. Next project is inside my house.

As a painter of 45 yrs I have used many graco high dollar pumps for work and many other brand`s , I sort of bought this unit along with another very expensive powerful unit as a toy just for kick`s to see what the modern world is up to these day`s , so I was doing my own home for fun and I was using behr marquee exterior flat paint , if you know about this material it is one of the thickest on the market it is an outstanding lasting paint , I thought for sure I was going to need thinning but I did not do it and went for it straight out of the gallon can , after you do the initial prep cleaning that is needed before you put paint in the machine , this thing can suck the chrome off of a trailer hitch ball , I sprayed 17 gallons over a 6 hour period and the pump did not fail me for one second and I did not even use a strain bag over the intake tube as I always do because I really did not care after only paying 200 bucks for this thing , I still cleaned it up as I always do with a 5 gallon bucket of hot water with a tiny spoon of lemon dish soap in it ran out the 5 gallons of water then a clean 2 gallon bucket of water then I put the pump armor thru her and I fell in love , my guy`s think I am crazy carrying this thing around with me every where like a six pack of soda, it weighs nothing , now here is my bad side of this review , I took another pump into my airless repair shop that most of southern calif uses for over 50 yrs they are outstanding and honest on all pump`s , I was talking about my new toy and how happy it made me as a painter he said oh boy watch out I have had a dozen or so of those come in and there is nothing I can do for them they are actually disposable , I said your kidding me , he was very serious and showed me a few that were in his recycle pile , they all had leaked paint out of the back of the machine from inside the plastic shroud and are not fixable , when you buy this unit you must register it the same day with graco do not hesitate before you touch it , just fill out the paper and send it in and the customer service at graco is out of this world they will simply send you another unit asap if you need it I say buy one for any job it will pay its self off just with the 50 dollar hose and the 125 dollar gun alone and the unit actually coast only as much as a good quality 5 gallon bucket of paint.

Pros: - Super easy to use! It comes with very detailed, laminated instructions with many pictures. I no trouble at all following the directions. Who ever designed the instructions needs a raise. - Really great quality finish - Cleanup is super fast. <10 mins for temp 1-2 days storage or 20-30 mins for long term storage. - Great control over pressure - Price point for the quality of product. The product is mostly steel, very durable. Cons: - On my second use, my sprayer wouldn't stop spraying material, regardless of trigger position. Even locking the sprayer would not help. Detailed ramblings of my experience: I bought this because I have a lot of painting projects coming up and I really needed something to speed things up. Once this sprayer arrived I decided to take on painting my large 7ft x 4ft wooden swing seat. I wanted to paint it with some exterior water based paint. My plan was to paint the underside, let it dry 24 hours, flip it, paint the top side. So I got everything setup with a tarp, put my swing seat on it and took the sprayer out of the box. I followed the instructions to the T. Here's what I did: - Put system into Prime mode. - Flushed the pump and discharge hoses system with water by priming it. - Put system into Spray mode. Turn sprayer to the unclog position. - Flushed the gun hose and gun with water. - Put it back into prime mode. - Transitioned the pump hose to paint. - After the discharge spewed paint for a couple seconds, I put the discharge hose in with the pump hose. - Put system into Spray mode. Turn sprayer to the unclog position. - Once paint comes out instead of water, I stop spraying and switch the gun to spray mode. Then I painted the underside of my swing. The finish turned out great! I very very pleased with the quality of the finish. After the painting was done, as per the instructions I flushed the pump with a hose, flushed the gun with water, cleaned the pump hose filter, cleaned the gun filter, cleaned the outside of the pump and discharge hoses and then put the sprayer away. The next day I flip my swing over and brought my sprayer out again. I followed the same setup steps as yesterday (above). However I noticed that while I was priming with water that my gun was discharging water, even though my trigger was in the locked position. I pushed forward anyway as I just wanted to get this done. Sure enough, when I got to the part where I loaded in paint, the trigger still wasn't working. It kept spraying material no matter what. I decided to paint the rest of my swing using the On/Off switch as my trigger and trouble shoot later in cleanup. So after I finished painting my swing, I tried a few different basic things to trouble shoot: - Took apart the gun and cleaned each part with a tooth brush and fresh water. - Loosened connection points on the gun/gun hose - Tightened connection points on the gun/gun hose - Let it flush in unclog mode with clean water for 5 mins Nothing worked. People online were saying it might be a faulty gun or stuck check valve in the unit it self. At this point I gave up and just returned it. I'm not going to spend time or money fixing this. If it's going to break down after one use, it's probably going to break down on me often down the road. So it makes more sense to just cut my losses. A lot of people have great luck with this unit, so I think maybe I just unlucky and got a badly constructed unit :(