Bugs in paint, Ideas

I have never had such a hard time with getting bugs in the paint.

I have had more bad luck painting this tractor than anything I have ever painted. First as I was finishing up my first two coats, my air compressor fell over and broke the regulator off in the tank. I got that fixed and then it kept blowing fuses and was smoking from the motor, so it was time for a new one. Now that I have that taken care of I am trying to put on the final coat and I keep getting those stupid little gnats in the top final coat. I have already had to wet sand once to get them out of the final coat and I tried to recoat today and sure enough as soon as I finished those darn things starting flying into the paint again. So now I am going to have to wet sand and try it again.

I am painting in a garage and I see no bugs at all when I am painting and then they just kind of appear in the paint as I am finishing.

Do any of you have any tricks or something you add to the paint to keep the bugs away. I have tried the old lemon juice trick before and it did not work? I am starting to lose my patience on this tractor, I really want to get it done so I can get it out of there and finish up my puller so I can actually play with it some this summer.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

Thanks

First of all , DO NOT paint at night or late evening! What I do for the "no-see-ems"is the night before I plan on painting , I spray a fog of Raid house and garden spray down towards the floor/wall area as I walk around the shop twice. Come out in the morning and everything is dead. Get it painted before a new crop makes their way in. Don't spray it up in the air. It is the fumes that kill and not the "spray" itself. I have never had contamination problems from it.

I am very willing to try it, Thank You very much.
After the paint dries good enough for me to wet sand I will give it another try and let you know how it goes.
It will be a few days, I have to wait a while to recoat. The paint says within 2 hours or after 2 days, so it looks like I am waiting 2 days.

I agree with bmaniac.. a lil pretreat of spray the day befroe , and then paint before it cools off... lil citronella candle burning helps.

when i do get a gnat in my paint, i try to remove it with a corner of paper or something so as not to leave a big artifact inthe paint.. and then sometimes I can paint out the defect using a lil more spray, and some air to smooth it.. etc.. kind alike painting out a run.. etc..

soundguy

I agree about the night thing. I just painted my car hauler trailer the other day and I spent a lot of time strippin and priming it to make it look really nice. I was going to paint ealier in the day but I had a graduation to go to. When I got started it was about 4 pm. I was working outside and it was beautiful, dry and calm. By the time I got my hazmat suit on, respirator, glasses and gloves and my paint mixed it was pushing 5pm. Then I got the first coat on, mixed up more paint and went for a 2nd and third coat. It was probably around 6 or 7 by the time I was done with ramps and all. Not too many bugs or anything. No cottonwood fuzzy things. I watered the ground down around the trailer first. After about an hour it was very dry to the touch and I looked and each rear fender had about 25 little bugs on there. I left them there. It looked like a few of them walked around just as it was setting up and they got stuck. Turned out to not be any big deal. The next day after it dried completely I wiped them off with my hand and it was fine. Kind of had me worried. Not a big deal as the trailer gets used and abused and then we redo it all over again about every 4 years. Sure turned out nice though. I painted it forest green for a change of pace with a grey deck. Has been black for a number of years and was also IH red for about the last 15 years. Turned out like new.

First painting rule, when painting anything: Get all painting done before "bug-time"! Preferably in early afternoon. And, if you do get a bug or two, after the paint is very dry, try wet-sanding them out with some wet sand-paper, and a sanding block. Preferably the finer, the better. Then buff and polish.