I once used more heat ( about 80 °C ) and thick coating 2 times and the wrinkles got larger - so totally different than your saying. now I wonder
Are you guys pre-heating both the paint AND the item to be painted to the same temps? My thoughts turned to off-gassing and "solvent pop" when I read these ideas. Not that any of this matters, really, when we're talking about uneven surfaces. Just an old painter's thought process. This whole thing is bugging me now. I'm heading to the garage to start experimenting (maybe I'll open the doors, too, to let the fumes out. Maybe).
Thicker coats will definitely give you larger wrinkles, so perhaps the coat thicknesses were not the same in both cases. For all the brands I mentioned, I did a pretty careful heat-vs-no-heat test, and heating always gave smaller wrinkles; dramatically smaller, if one used and IR lamp...
I found that heating the part itself before painting did not cause much of a noticeable difference in outcome. If I had to draw some conclusion, I would say that heating the part might have made the wrinkles slightly larger. Mind you, I am using pretty heavy coats of paint; with thinner coats, I could imagine heating the part will change things more. Of course if the coats are really thin, you won't get much wrinkling at all anyway. Tidbit: Plastikote is easily the brand that will wrinkle at the thinnest coats.
Yes; no "VIN boss", so Euro... As you'd expect, I've seen both Euro and USA cars with that same "lizard skin" wrinkle finish...
doesnt look like a large vs small wrinkle. orig paint looks blotchy with areas of wrinkle and smooth. ive seen this pattern on powder coated machinery.
The photo on the left of this post shows red and gold cars on a lift. This shows the height of my garage, which also has a large floor area. When I paint inside this garage, if bad fumes are produced, I open two large garage doors. So there, Mr heh heh.
Well, my power-coat guy is not aware of a source for such a powder-coat. There is a "crocodile" powder coat that at first glance looks sort of similar, but if you look closely it is not the same...
The comment was meant as a joke.... referring to using aerosol sprays in confined spaces and the warnings plastered all over the cans. It's was not directed at you or any other individual....other that to make a joke about the lack of safety precautions people take. If you've never caught a buzz from painting in a confined space, you're not doing it right (the previous sentence was also meant as a joke) Years ago, I had a neighbor with an enormous garage. He had just finished painting a restoration project ('63 Vette) in his enclosed garage....went inside to take a shower, and when the hot water heater lit off, it also lit off his garage (and his project). He failed to even try to ventilate after the job was done. Sorry if you took offense. Clearly wasn't my intention.
Just realized that I never posted a conclusion to this thread. Here are the highlights: 1) Don't believe anything you find on the internet. Some of the tricks that people cite might have worked in the distant past, but paint formulations have changed, and modern paints don't react the way they used to. 2) If you really feel like experimenting, interpret "lacquer" as nitrocellulose lacquer (which one can still get in spray cans for guitar finishing), and "enamel" as Rustoleum Professional High-Performance Enamel; with these two types of products most of the internet "advice" seems to not be totally false, but the none of the wrinkle patterns that I was ever able to get were anywhere close to the desired finish; generally speaking, all the wrinkles were much too fine and uniform, no matter how much I changed mixing ratios and drying times. 3) The product that worked the "best" was ironically the one that was most prone to an uneven wrinkle finish: "Pit Crew" by Seymour. Since the wrinkling of this product is sensitive to the surface it is applied to, one can literally paint the desired wrinkle pattern on the piece and then spray the Pit Crew over it. The wrinkling texture varies according to the underlying pattern and you can get something passable. Some things to note on the Pit Crew: a) The uneven finishing of the basic metal piece will tend to overshadow anything that you do with pre-painting, so you have to start by priming the piece enough to fill all the finish irregularities. b) The finish of the paint has a sort of "glossy plastic" look that is not quite right. I managed to find a NOS sample of the original wrinkle finish, and it is actually surprisingly glossy, but does not have that same "plastic" quality. c) No matter how hard you try to avoid it, if you want coarse wrinkling, the Pit Crew is going to give you some areas where the wrinkles literally become "fins" on the surface; the pattern is tight, but the wrinkles themselves are just too high. I took an Xacto-knife and manually just cut down any fins that looked unacceptable. Here are some pictures of what I finally did, and ended-up with; not perfect, but a lot better than just using VHT or something... Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Hello Alex. I enjoyed this thread. We are at the painting stage and I have started my experimentation; currently with VHT; as we are not trying for the big pattern look. The other thread has a lot of commentary on the Riloplast product; apparently practically unobtainable in the US. I am doing the cam drive covers for my tests and have done the 200 degree oven. I plan to do airdry as the front of my garage gets to the 80's these days. I also plan to try 175 in the oven. I agree with your comments an the paint make up as my results are finer and more uniform than my experience years ago. As a side note one of the two covers had a primer on it that refused to acknowledge any amount of paint stripper. Funny because I had encountered the same problem with the primer on 12467's alloy doors many decades ago. I decide to have them sand blasted by a friend; BIG mistake as we needed a thousand heat shrinks to get them back 'home'! 12699 is moving along with the front metal work in process as we speak. We did manage to get a set of headlight buckets from Australia. We did a partial disassembly of the motor and confirmed it has extensive new parts so it is being prepped for a dyno run.
I think you are right here - please see my valve covers on my 250 Gte Regards Christopher Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login