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The great general painting thread
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I came up with this for the exhaust side of the oil tank, I wanted the FLH designation on there, but also wanted to incorporate Art Deco sensibilities into it. The text and design will be in the Root Beer color against a black background
I have an idea for the other side of the tank, but have not drawn it out yet. Really having a hard time getting any bike time right now.
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Yes I picked up a vinyl cutter as a tool for my retirement side gig. It is going to open up a lot of possibilities for painting now that my hands shake a little too much to pull straight lines with my pinstriping brushes. It should turn this into a nice project.Comment
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The plan was to mask off the tank, prime it, put on the base coat, and make the stencil this weekend. Ran into a few minor glitches. But let's talk about what did go well.
When I sanded I ground down the areas I wanted to repaint and then on the area where the new will overlap the old I just sanded down to really scuff up the clear coat. Supposedly this primer will bite into that. So next I gathered up my masking supplies:
First step was to wash the tank down well with lacquer thinner, you want to pull any remaining grease from the areas that you will mask so the tape will stick well. The rag should be wet but not dripping and keep turning it to a clean spot as you work around the surface. The razor knife allows me to trim the tape where it meets the upper and lower lip, I want to get fresh paint on those areas as they were a little dinged up from my ham handed disassembly.
Next take your time and mask off any areas you don't want painted, overlap along the edges to build a stiffer surface less likely to blow back when spraying on the primer and base coat. I also printed an image of outline of the design work. My first pass was too wide and would have been covered in part by the exhaust pipe, the version in the picture is just right.
Next I gathered up supplies to prime the tank with. I am a firm believer in staying within a system. If you like Dupont use all Dupont, in my case I like House of Kolor and so the whole system is HOK. Notice the post sanding cleaner. This is great prep, HOWEVER it does not cut through grease well. SO first step is Lacquer thinner, allow that to evaporate, then go over the areas to be primed with the cleaner. USE A SUIT, these things are really cheap and it will keep the HOK solvents from penetrating your skin, I blew it off when I did a quick coat of clear and my skin crawled for hours afterwards. Also use a good respirator and wear googles, blow back is a reality, be prepared for it. With the HOK system you choose a reducer based on the temp in your work area. Also when you shoot primer you want it to set up slower so the paint has a good chance to adhere to the substrata. THe gun is an old Badger touch up gun. I really like the control and I don't like to spray primer through my good DeVilbiss gun. That one will come out when we start to shoot color.
The other thing that makes a huge difference in your finished product is clean air. I always purge my compressor first, amazing how much moisture gets in there. The I use two filters one before the regulator and a second afterwards. I want as much moisture out of the air as possible, You don't have to go with big dollar items, especially if you double up on them.
And here is where things went south for me. The darn temps dropped down to the 30s last night and I did not have the thermostat set high enough in the garage. At this point it will take hours for the garage to warm and more importantly it will take many hours for the tank, paint, and reducer to all come up to temp. I do not believe paint will be going on today!
So instead I decided to take a shot at cutting my first stencil. After fussing around setting the blade depth properly and figuring out the speed and feed rates ( Hey I am back to my Bridgeport days ). I managed to get a decent pass. I learned a bunch about how to "weed" the template ( get rid of the unwanted bits ) and all in all I think this is a good first attempt.
I wanted to take this one and do up a metal test plate, but problem number two crept up and bit me in the ass. The way this works is you use the machine to cut out the design on the stencil material, then you weed out the parts where you want the paint to show through. Next you apply a piece of clear transfer tape, pull off the backing and apply the template . The issue was the free roll of transfer tape that came with the machine is too narrow for my design. Tomorrow I will order the right stuff.Last edited by DoomBuggy; 03-15-2020, 11:37 AM.Comment
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Wow- that's interesting stuff- stay within the system is sound advice. I got micro blistering on filled areas a few years ago after color coat. I was pissed. Sanded it down and filled the 'craters' with filler putty,sanded down and repainted- it's fine years later! I can only assume because of the extent of it it wasn't random contamination, but outgassing of the filler...Comment
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So I really like this machine, but the warehouse at this place sucks the big one. I ordered the transfer tape, solvent proof stencil material and a set of their "best" blades, they got all three items wrong. Now I get to wait some more.
On the bright side, it has been raining and cold here, even if I heat up the garage the humidity is too high to shoot black without getting fogging, so I will continue to wait.
Argh
At least it has been really cool watching the progress as Jesse works on my heads!Comment
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Hah-retail store staff don't seem like the brightest some days, but hey , if's employment, it's good.
That bloom issue sucks- don't get tempted to try!
Jesse is doing good with those heads. My friendly local engine guru managed to salvage my OEM heads. I'm blown away by the fin repair on yours!Comment
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Driving that train, high on cocaine
Casey Jones you better, watch your speed
Trouble ahead, trouble behind
And you know that notion just crossed my mind​Comment
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thats right make it werkComment
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Driving that train, high on cocaine
Casey Jones you better, watch your speed
Trouble ahead, trouble behind
And you know that notion just crossed my mind​Comment
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It was "decent enough" to shoot primer yesterday and I think the missus has had enough of me in the house with this lock-down so I decided to at least get primer on the tank.
Back in the day, the guys I learned from pretty much eyeballed their paint mix. Yes everyone had a viscosity cup, but once they knew what worked they would eyeball the mix ( usually mixed and stored in an old beer bottle ). The new systems don't tolerate that, particularly the activated epoxies like this primer or like the Imron I used to spray.
To that end I use mixing cups. You can get the quart size at Home Depot or order the pint size at a fraction of the cost.
Since the body work is pretty good on this tank and I am not trying to hide any flaws I plan to mix this batch as a medium fill primer. This calls for 4 parts paint, 1 part activator, and 1 part reducer, again I will use a slow reducer on this step. I learned a long time ago to mark off the ratios on the cup just to make sure....
Now I want to adjust the gun to get the right fan and material volume. I have a bunch of old beware of dog and for sale signs that I test on. The upside is I then use these to test designs and airbrush ideas, that is to come a bit later. But first I want to set the gun so that moving at a steady rate, I am just laying down a light even coat. For each pass I want to overlap 1/2 of the previous stroke. On the drawing below, each color is another pass across, hope you can visualize it.
Ok, so on our test sheet the tack coat should look like this:
And now on the tank the same thing, just transparent, but still covering every inch.
Last edited by DoomBuggy; 03-28-2020, 9:16 AM.Comment
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