painting info needed.

kzmarvo wrote:

<---lost, but i do appreciate pterosaur and his info on painting. But since i dont know what ya'll are talkin about i dont give a crap:whistle: :laugh: :woohoo: :evil:

No big thing, Marvo; it was merely a left-field peanut gallery shot from an obviously constipated point of view, and a pretty tired one at that - that original factory paint is the be-all-end-all of finishes.

Preserving original paint is an idea with merit - but when it becomes a crutch for some me-against-the-world personal crusade, the point sadly becomes secondary to anything remotely connected to reality.

And when that slippery grip on the facts of life stoops to usurping other people's words to prop up a pointless attack, it deserves what it got - a swift kick in the ass.

Back to your paint in the next episode...

Okay, back to the topic:

So you've let the parts sit in the sun a couple of days.

Here's why: rattlecan paint - I don't care whose - is always gonna be two things that mixed gun-shot paint doesn't have to be - over thinned and comparatively soft. It's just a fact - which is why it averages $5 a can instead of $40-80 a quart.

As a result, rattlecan paint will shrink more as it sets. After a couple days in the sun, there will be a noticeable change in the complexion of the job - it will have shrunk into any gaps and any major varience in contour. That's why I made a point of getting the prep work right from the beginning.

By this time, with the benefit of the sunshine, the paint is something over %98 as shrunk and as hard as it's gonna get.

And this is also the reason I'd said earlier that especially with rattlecan, you don't want an excess of material on the job - the more paint you load on, the more shrinkage will occur - and the more it will be affected by any layers applied over it - namely clearcoat. I've seen clear appled over uncured soft rattlecan paint wrinkle up like a prune due to the shrinkage of the clear. No joke.

Remember that piece of used #600 paper and those water jugs? Go get 'em.

Starting with any visible high spots, slowly contour-sand them until they work into parity with the surrounding surface. BUT GO EASY - you've got at the most a little over .001" - if that much - and once you sand through the paint, it's a bitch to fix short of another round of color shot, and no matter what, will always leave a shadow or a light spot.

If you don't have any experience at this sort of thing, might be worthwile to shoot a junk piece while doing your color shot to play with - it takes a touch.

Eventually, you want to arrive at a uniform surface contour and roughness, ready for the next layer to stick to.

As far as uniformity of color and hiding any imperfections in the the surface, this is where the buck stops - don't expect that clear is going to hide anything. If the color is off or there's a sand-through right smack behind the filler neck, then re-shoot the color layer per the previous steps.

If everything's peachy, then this is when you apply any decals, striping or two-tone if you're not going to shoot a metallic layer.

Whether or not you want to shoot a metallic layer has a bearing on the next steps, so I'll wait until you give me an idea of what you're up to before going on.

Besides, it'll give me a chance to pick up another six-pack to swill while typing all this stuff.

Post edited by: Pterosaur, at: 2006/07/23 12:02

this post is without a doubt the most detailed one i have read yet about rattle-can painting! i am impressed that you have the paitence to go into such fine detail on how to achieve the best job possible. (and you even found time to squash a potential pissing match) my 6 year old got her bike out of the garage and scratched the hell out of my 650 and i told the wife i was going to try it. now the only question is, anyone you know of make candy colors in a rattle can?

Thanks.

Actually, it could easily be twice as long if I was to get into microscopic detail on some of the finer points, but the significant issues to this stage are covered. To get from where I left off through clearing and polish/buffing, I'm probably looking at the total being again half as long as what's already there.

That's why I kicked off the response with sly inferences about kzmarvo "not wanting much" and "in the interest of not writing a book".

None of this is rocket science, but rather common sense built up over more year's worth of expeience than I care to admit to.

Rattlecan paint suffers from the marketing hype of being "fast and cheap" - two things that a decent paint job never is - which is the largest singler impediment to decent results.

I've seen rattlecan candies somewhere, sometime, but the mfgr. eludes me at the moment. For all I know, House of Kolor may even have it, I haven't explored that part of their web site - whenever I've shot candies, it's always been gun-based....

House of Kolor has a candy rattle-can line you can pick up at wal-mart, but its pretty steep..the cans are about 1/2 the size of normal rattlecans, comes in 3-4 steps (4 on plastics), the 3 step is highly reflective silver base about $5-6 a can, kandy color coat about $10 a can, then the clear at $5-6 a can. I figured out the first step for plastics shouldn't be skipped if the plastic is bare..the paint will crack in atleast two somwhat stressed spots, and flake off back down to the plastic, taking the primer with it, but the first step seems to allow more flexability in the final paint, possibly making it softer though.

del

Gonna hit em with color tonight, midnightish.:whistle:

Marvo! How goes the painting process? PT gave a great write-up. Curious to see how everything turned out.
Keep up posted.

They look pretty damn good if i do say so myself. I am leaving them sit for a week like i was told, thats some hard stuff ta do. But far as my bike goes, i got new tubes put in and i got my jets in and my new pods on. So for the most part i am waiting for the body parts to be ready and still waiting on the title.So the next few days i will spend cleaning and polishing her.(might yank it apart and paint the frame tonight)not sure yet.

kzmarvo wrote:

They look pretty damn good if i do say so myself. I am leaving them sit for a week like i was told, thats some hard stuff ta do...

Okay, so the parts are in paint. Any chance of a pic or two to scope things out?

Give me an idea of what you want to do next, and I'll figure out some way of mashing it into a post.

Glad to hear you're satified with the color shot...

I will get some pics on here around 2 hours from now, if all goes well.