Back in beige

[jamie]

He is a big lad.

Well, after all that, I've just gone an ordered something that isn't Plasti Dip.

It's paint, it looks new (the Data Sheet is from Jan 2014) and it's French or something. Never seen it before. It may have cropped-up in my Google search because I'm on a Spanish hotel's IP address.

Now I can stop thinking about it and I instantly feel much more peaceful inside. I'll keep quiet now till I have some photos of it on the shell...

[Jonny Hart]

'Paint', whatever next!?

I went through this with mine. Considered every space age chemical compound under the sun and just ended up with paint. It'll look fab forsho!

[jamie]

The paint is here. It's an industrial, aluminium-based rust-proofer.

Opening the can, I like what I saw. This is before I had stirred it. Sort of had the reflectivity of mercury.



I was feeling too lazy to load and clean the spray gun, so I tried brush-painting a bit on my new aluminium rear panel. I expected the paint to be thick, but it's very thin - almost like water. It brushes like crap, but the look is there - it's exactly what I had in mind, and should look insane applied to the whole car.



The datasheet says it has to be sprayed with an airless sprayer at a gazillion PSI (I guess the opposite of High Volume Low Pressure). I'm going to try spraying a bit with my HVLP anyway and see how it comes out.

[sladey]

It'll look great Jamie.

[nrc914]

Good luck with the spraying Jamie - hope it comes out looking like the image you have in your head!

[AndrewSlater]

Good luck with the spraying Jamie.

My money was on Sand Beige especially as you had said "I plan to keep mine Sand Beige with the specific intention of making it difficult to sell. I've learnt my lesson."

but then you said "I think about what colour I'd like the car to be more than I think about shagging." - at which point it became clear it was going to become '50 Shades of Grey'

Hope it turns out great.

[jury]

There were some nice Satin silver cars at Essen, if you get it right it will look great !!

I can"t find my picture of the Mercedes on the Airstream display with the satin finish, but I think the finish on this 356 was nice.

[jamie]

Well, I've got the colour right (to my eyes), but the finish is far from it.

This evening I sanded the last coat of primer-sealer with 400 grit. After I had finished, I realised there was nothing left to do except apply some paint.

So I cleaned the shell with degreaser, then tack rags, loaded my gun with the magic silver paint, and let rip. I thought that the matte finish of the paint would hide any dust particles. I couldn't have been more wrong.

So here it is. It looks a lot better in the photos than in real life. Up close, theres runs and dust everywhere and it really looks like crap. I applied it with my HVLP and it went on too thick. It looked fine whilst I was applying it, but the product is really thin and the solids just seem to drag it down whatever surface it's on.

I think the solution is to let it dry (takes many days), then block-sand what's on there and reapply with a lot more pressure and a lot less flow.

But crucially, I am certain that the only way I will get a clean, neatly-applied finish, is to do it in a proper spray booth with space, light and absolutely zero dust. Even if I soak the floor and walls down with a lake's-worth of water, there's no way I'm ever going to get that garage sterile enough to get this cleanly on the car in one hit.

I guess this bit was always going to be trial-and-error

[KS]

Is there no end to your talents and determination?

[sladey]

Hi Jamie,

Well done for going for it

In my home made spray booth I had an extractor fan (BIG!) and a makeshift filter for it, and Neil wet the floor each time he sprayed. There were bits in the paint but not actually too bad - they polished out OK. Whether you can polish out stuff from your paint finish I don't know - but I would have thought being able to polish/mop it will be crucial to getting a good finish

[jamie]

The paint is still drying. As I said, it dries very slowly...

It's an interesting finish, but I dunno, I'm not overwhelmed by it. I don't know if it's that I'm tired of thinking about it, or that I've spent so long getting the body perfectly flat that I feel that I should be laying a proper original Porsche colour over all the work, or that it perhaps makes the car feel a bit weird - like it has lost it's identity.

The slightly mottled, podgy orange-peely texture is also not sitting well with me, although I can fix.

So much psychology. So much indecision.

[Darren65]

Going silver must be a photographer's thing! .....

[manipou]

Hats off to you Jamie, catching up on these resto threads has been fun, yours is the most impressive by far, I wish I had your patience!

Shame you don't live next door anymore, I'm sure Richard wont mind you using the booth. If you can get it over maybe you can arrange a time he isn't using it?

[sladey]

The paint is still drying. As I said, it dries very slowly...

It's an interesting finish, but I dunno, I'm not overwhelmed by it. I don't know if it's that I'm tired of thinking about it, or that I've spent so long getting the body perfectly flat that I feel that I should be laying a proper original Porsche colour over all the work, or that it perhaps makes the car feel a bit weird - like it has lost it's identity.

It does feel a bit weird when the colour goes on as it's the first time you're seeing what was basically an idea spread over a big area. However if it's something deeper than that then now is the time to change your mind. From memory when my colour when on I pretty much liked it straight away - but I had to visualise it being broken up by a stripe.

One of the reasons I went to a flat colour was so that I could touch it up myself in the future without worrying about matching a difficult finish.

You ought to have kids Jamie - then you'll be too knackered for all this overthinking shite

Maybe flat back a panel or two and see how you feel about them then

[Nige]

Good effort, keeping it dust and insect free for the full drying time is going to be hard. Would it harden quicker in an oven?