Painting The Magg (or How I Spent My Summer Vacation)

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Awesome work!

Can you describe how you did the layout of the fns.

Thank you,



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See the first part of this thread for how I painted the fins. Lots of masking tape and plastic trash bags.
 
Nathan, I saw how you taped the fins, I was asking about how you measured and kept the striping the same.


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Good question. I drew the fin design on paper full scale so that the yellow, green, and black areas were all the same size. Then I measured and made tiny pencil marks on the fins as a guide for applying the masking tape. The hard part was applying the tape perfectly straight, especially where the lines were near the fillets. Many times I had to pull the tape off and re-do it to get it right.
 
Good question. I drew the fin design on paper full scale so that the yellow, green, and black areas were all the same size. Then I measured and made tiny pencil marks on the fins as a guide for applying the masking tape. The hard part was applying the tape perfectly straight, especially where the lines were near the fillets. Many times I had to pull the tape off and re-do it to get it right.

Thanks

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Don't let him BS you like that Lp. I KNOW it was really the magic paint-n-tape elves ! :wink:
 
A bit of a thread necro here, but I have a finishing question for Nathan.

I've been attempting to get that gorgeous "mile deep" look on my current Vagabond project, and I think I'm on my way to some serious gloss with a bunch of filler primer, sandpaper, and light coating followed by sanding. I am trying to get rid of a bunch of old rattlecans (tamiya lacquer and old krylon), and I have noticed that both of those I can wetsand after ~24h of drying without noticing the paint starting to come off on my hands and the paper. However, my accent colour (rusto 2x black enamel) keeps coming off when I'm sanding it, even after observing the full 48h curing time on the can.

Although I know that I'm breaking the "rule" of never mixing paint brands, I'm sticking to the standard approach of applying enamels last over top of my lacquer coats. In this thread I know you mentioned that polishing actually takes some of the paint off with it, should I expect to see the same when I'm wetsanding my accent colours?? It doesn't "seem" right to me since it almost always leaves a dull and rough look on the rocket... But what the heck do I know, after all you got unreal results with your process!!!
 
I kept offering to Nathan to go help look for it, the trees are very dense where it landed. Going to have to look again next launch!
Im determined to find it for him!Too much work in it to let that one go!

Well now I have a DJI Phantom UAV Drone with camera I'm bringing to this weekends launch, we're going to look for the Minnie Magg And G-Dogs Pike!
 
apologies for the necro, How long do you leave the masking tape on? until the enamel is dry or shortly after painting?
 
apologies for the necro, How long do you leave the masking tape on? until the enamel is dry or shortly after painting?

With enamel paint I leave the tape on for at least 8 hours. Enamel actually takes weeks to completely harden. I rarely use enamel paint anymore. Now I use lacquer, which dries very fast and goes on smoother without orange peel. With lacquer you can remove the masking in an hour. The downside of lacquer is that unlike enamel, it requires clear coat to get a high gloss finish.
 
Wow! I'm going to re-read this thread carefully to see if there's anything in here I can use. Thanks for posting so much detail!
 
With enamel paint I leave the tape on for at least 8 hours. Enamel actually takes weeks to completely harden. I rarely use enamel paint anymore. Now I use lacquer, which dries very fast and goes on smoother without orange peel. With lacquer you can remove the masking in an hour. The downside of lacquer is that unlike enamel, it requires clear coat to get a high gloss finish.

Isn't lacquer more brittle??
 
Isn't lacquer more brittle??

I haven't had any problem with lacquer paint jobs cracking. Unless you count rockets that have come in ballistic, then everything cracks.

My biggest problem with lacquer has been fogging or blushing within seconds after spraying, which is caused by humidity. Enamel can do that too but lacquer is worse. The solution for that is to avoid spraying lacquer in humid conditions, and use a slower thinner that doesn't evaporate so fast.
 
Wow! I'm going to re-read this thread carefully to see if there's anything in here I can use. Thanks for posting so much detail!

Glad you found this old thread. On my Formula 150 thread you had asked about less expensive finishing techniques for rattle can painters. The Minie-Magg in this thread was painted with rattle cans only, has no clear coat, and all polishing was done by hand with no power equipment. And it looked just as good as anything I have done (until it drifted into the woods never to be seen again). With enamel you can get a very high-gloss finish with no clear coat but don't try this with metallic enamel because metallic paint often is completely ruined if you try to wet sand it. If you want to replicate what I did here using metallic enamel you will need to spray a few coats of clear enamel over it before wet sanding.
 
Glad you found this old thread. On my Formula 150 thread you had asked about less expensive finishing techniques for rattle can painters. The Minie-Magg in this thread was painted with rattle cans only, has no clear coat, and all polishing was done by hand with no power equipment. And it looked just as good as anything I have done (until it drifted into the woods never to be seen again). With enamel you can get a very high-gloss finish with no clear coat but don't try this with metallic enamel because metallic paint often is completely ruined if you try to wet sand it. If you want to replicate what I did here using metallic enamel you will need to spray a few coats of clear enamel over it before wet sanding.

Thanks for that tip. I do use metallics occasionally.

What if you use decals? Can you safely wet sand a clear coat painted over decals, or is that too risky?
 
Although I was quite nervous about it, I had no choice but to do some wet sanding on Rusto black metallic paint recently (after a paint repair there were serious dams that needed to be removed). After a coat of Future the finish looked fine.

I am far from expert in these matters but that is one data point. I haven't tried polishing and waxing it though.
 
Although I was quite nervous about it, I had no choice but to do some wet sanding on Rusto black metallic paint recently (after a paint repair there were serious dams that needed to be removed). After a coat of Future the finish looked fine.

I am far from expert in these matters but that is one data point. I haven't tried polishing and waxing it though.

That's good to know. I have tried wet sanding metallic silver enamel twice and both times it was ruined and I had to start over. Maybe it's only silver that is a problem. Anyway now I always clear coat my rockets so it's not a problem anymore.
 
That's good to know. I have tried wet sanding metallic silver enamel twice and both times it was ruined and I had to start over. Maybe it's only silver that is a problem. Anyway now I always clear coat my rockets so it's not a problem anymore.

I was too afraid to put sandpaper to my silver, even though it really needed some help. Perhaps a distinction should be drawn between silver (and gold, I presume) and metallic "colors".
 
That's good to know. I have tried wet sanding metallic silver enamel twice and both times it was ruined and I had to start over. Maybe it's only silver that is a problem. Anyway now I always clear coat my rockets so it's not a problem anymore.

any single stage metallic shouldnt be wet sanded. beings how the clear, color, and metallic are all in one, the metallic flake can sit right on top and once sandpaper hit it.... bummer.
 
el·bow grease
[ˈelbō ˈˌɡrēs]

NOUN
informal
hard physical work, especially vigorous polishing or cleaning..and my input..sanding.


And time.
 
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