View new posts | View your posts best paint to use...

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So I'm curious, what is the best paint to use? Ive been looking for plasti-kote brand black satin, but I cant find it anywhere. (someone mentioned it)

Watcha paintin? Foam, plastic, resin or fiberglass?

its Alumilite Resin shell, I forget who made the bumper, but its grey. The rest of the parts are pvc or what i"m assuming is resin, i bought them from MMM

I like Plasticote Lacquer paints. They dry really quick to the touch ( not fully cured though). You can buy them at any automotive store such as Pep Boys or Auto Zone. Plasticote also makes a really nice filler primer for filling in small scratches and holes some times found in the resin parts.

I'm real partial to the cheap walmart flat black paint.. it doesn't cover as well, and you need to buy a few cans, but its very cheap, and gives a good flat finish. Plus it dries quickly.

I had less luck with their gloss paint.. that seems to take a full day to dry.

i cannot find plasticote paints in pepboys, autozone or checkers. it just doesn't exist in phoenix.

Really?? Hmm. Duplicolor is also a very nice paint. I don't think I've seen flat black though. But you can always spray a gloss or semi-gloss paint and coat it with a matte finish. I just did it to my ALICE frame this weekend and it turned out great.

I use good ole Rust-oleum.In my experience,Dupli-color and plasti-kote seem way to watery and run very easily.Could just have been a bad can but FYI anyway.

Probably. Either that or just sprayed too much at once. Its best in light, multiple coats.

I have had very good experiences using a combo of Rustoleum Plastic Primer and Rustoleum Painter's Touch Line Semi-Gloss Black.

they are easily found at both Lowe's and the Home Depot

Thanks. Your pack looks great, what did you use to achieve the faux welds?

I'm really partial to Krylon Fusion myself. One of their newer lines, it's specially formulated for plastics and wood.

You don't need to apply a primer (it's one of those molecular bonding paints) and it applies really easily - plus it looks great. If you want to do sanding afterwards (like you might with a primer) you can, but I've not needed to on anything other than wood.

I always wondered about that paint. I had a friend who swore by it. Hows the dry time on it. I assume its an enamel?

Krylon fusion is really meant for plastic.. no reason to spend more for it for something like wood.

It ai drys in an hour or two, but isn;t bonded or seriously cured for a week. Its very prone for scratches until its fully set.

But once set, its very durable.. I used some to paint a kiddie pool black, and turn it into an outdoor pond! Its lasted 3 seasons now out in harsh weathger.. they only gone, are places where rock seriously scraped and dug into the plastic itself.

Hmmm... are people using gloss or satin for painting proton packs? I'd always thought they were flat black.

I would reccomend you use something cheap like Krylon or Rustoleum. You shouldn'r need plastic paint, so long as you prime the surface first.

Also, I would reccomend using some kind of flat black. I tried Krylon gloss black on a PKE, and Rustoleum semi-gloss black on my pack, and honestly, the glossier the paint was, the worse it looked.

At the same time, I also tried Rustomeum flat-black high performance enamel, and I don't know if it's normally this way, or if I didn't shake the can enough after it had been sitting for a year, but it left a fuzzy texture on the surface and crosshatch patterns in places.

However, in all cases, after sanding it down, or rubbing it down with 0000 steel wool, the finish came out matte black and looked great. Sanding it down actually made it less matte in the case of the flat black Rustoleum enamel, due to the removal of that fuzzy surface texture.

The thing is, if you start with a gloss, and try to rub it down to a matte finish with steel wool, you're gonna be doing a lot of rubbing and there'll be corners you just can't get into. For that reason I think when I next paint something, I'll try priming it with krylon first, and then painting it with either flat black krylon or satin black krylon. I'm not sure what the difference between the two is, but I'll probably see if I can find pics on google of stuff people have painted with it. Either one should look the same once buffed out though I'd imagine. But I'd prefer the one that gets me closest to the final look I want, because buffing with steel wool sucks.

Oh and I wouldn't reccomend using a paint for plastic on metal. Plastic paint I hear actually chemically bonds to the plastic. Who knows if it will adhere well to metal. You might find a year from now it's peeling up in places.

Yep.. use the proper paint for the proper item. Just because something costs more, does NOT mean it will look better, or adhere over time.

If I am looking for a gloss finish I go with Krylon Fusion. If I am looking for a flat finish I go with plain Rustoleum.

You could always seal the whole pack with a matte finish clear coat. It takes the gloss out of the paint plus provides protection. Which is good if you plan on weathering it. I'm doing this cause I have 2 cans of black gloss paint lying around and it doesn't make sense to go buy flat black if I can alter the shine.

i like to use rustoleum, its a good first coat to fill in cracks and blend in imperfections. from there, i just used your average flat black spray paint.

ive actually been searching for a bed-liner (the stuff they spray/paint pickup beds with) to give it a coat of armor, but its really hard to come across ones without gritty texture. when i do find it, its on.

Professional Rustoleum semi-gloss, its fast drying, it leaves a very nice finish and closely resembles the on screen pack paint jobs.





Chris

I've had good results with Fresh and Easy Spray Enamel. It works best on wood, very good on PVC and passable on cardboard. Plus, it costs about 1.25 a can, so if it doesn't work, you're not out that much. It's available at Sears and Kmart.

Er... you could just buy flat Krylon you know...

in answer to the other questions:

I've found fusion is handle-able in 25mins or less, but you'll not want to bash it around at all for a day or so (however you can sand and reapply after the 25mins).

It appears to be as durable as any other spray paint I've used, no problems.

It is recommended for plastics (which most shells will have a lot of) but also says it can be used for wood right on the can. My general tip is to always stick with one brand of paint anyhow - black is never actually black (blue black, brown black, etc) and different brands (hell, different LINES of the same brand) can have different black looks.

Krylon Fusion is cheaper than the Rustoleum Flat Black (at least at my local ACE) and I like the look of it better. It's a no brainer for me - ymmv.

Personally I'd like to recommend the Krylon BBQ & Stove Paint for the final coat on the Proton Pack. I didn't use it yet on my pack (and I sure will) but I used it a lot to paint other props, mostly Blasters, Airsoft guns and my Pulse Rifle. It's got a nice semi-gloss metallic finish (it really looks like black metal) and once cured it's pretty much indestructible. It holds up really well to chipping and scratching. Plus it's easy to apply. I pretty much swear by the stuff.