Lacquer thinner

[Curt Goodrich]

I was at my local jobber and saw a 5 gallon bucket of lacquer thinner marked as virgin. Since I'm using a base coat/clear coat system rather than single stage paints, I just use lacquer thinner for cleaning my guns. What's the deal with virgin lacquer thinner? I know a local bike painter that uses Imron (single stage) and swears the virgin stuff works better but couldn't explain why. I'm assuming he's reducing with it but I guess I just thought lacquer thinner is lacquer thinner.

[Tom Kellogg]

We use a gun cleaner to clean our equipment; mixture of thinners, acetone, etc. For thinner, we use Imron reducer for all of our systems since it works with everything. Many lacquer thinners can not be used with urethanes and I don't want to keep all kinds of reducers around here. One can is enough.

[Jonathan]

supposedly it's more "pure" or higher quality. If you're just cleaning guns I was told not to worry about it.

[David Cheakas]

We use a gun cleaner called WF in our automatic gun cleaner. We get it from a local bulk solvent supplier. It's hotter than most lacquer thinners, and cost a bit less. It's so hot that when I pour a fresh supply into the tank, I can feel it as the vapors rise. The guy told me what all it had in it, but that was many years and brain cells ago. I remember a local jobber said he had some "Virgin thinner" also, but never got around to asking him about it.