Good, Bad and Ugly paint results

The Rocketry Forum

Help Support The Rocketry Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

DynaSoar

Well-Known Member
Joined
Mar 14, 2004
Messages
3,022
Reaction score
0
Good: Rustoleum "American Accents" Satin White. Highly preferable to their glossy. Nearly glossy itself, better adhesion to later coats, and you can pile this stuff on far more before it runs. I had a very bad balsa nose with many pits still after 3 double coats of lacquer sanding sealer and 2 double coats of primer. 2 coats of this stuff and it came out glassy.

Bad: Rustoleum "American Accents" matte finish clear coat. Turned glossy black into black with uneven a mounts of light colored dust. I believe it also made decals get very brittle and flake (though they might have been bad decals, they can get this way if they get hot). A very nice Black Brandt is now not very nice at all.

Ugly: Same stuff turned the aluminum coat on a Kappa 9M to battleship grey. This, however, is fixable. Luckily I'd only got to the stainless steel details, not the fluourescent red, so masking will only be a minor pain.

Also ugly: Rustoleum stainless steel paint if you use too much. The finish is remarkably smooth and shiny, but if you use too much, the shine which is building up under the fluid surface "cracks" so that the base grey in the paint shows through. Luckily this touches up easily with a a few small squirts, and they bland right in. The bad news is this stuff takes 2 days to dry.
 
Originally posted by DynaSoar
Good: Rustoleum "American Accents" Satin White. Highly preferable to their glossy. Nearly glossy itself, better adhesion to later coats, and you can pile this stuff on far more before it runs.

Thanks for the tip! I have been using the glossy version of this paint, and had to completely redo my Super Big Bertha because it just peeled off like the skin of an onion when I removed the masking tape. Both colors, glossy white and apple red. But it might have been because I went back and forth between different brands of paint for alternating coats, I don't remember now. I had previously been treating any paints made by Rustoleum to be compatible with each other, but after this, and because both versions of the same color use different label numbers, I treat them as different brands, and iffy as to compatibility.

By the way - if anybody knows of a good way to get a glossy aluminum or silver-grey metallic finish, please let me know. I screwed up my Silver Comet when I applied glear gloss over the metallic silver.

S..
 
Originally posted by Bushrat
By the way - if anybody knows of a good way to get a glossy aluminum or silver-grey metallic finish, please let me know. I screwed up my Silver Comet when I applied glear gloss over the metallic silver.

S..

As far as I can tell, do the metallic last, over the clear which is over the other coats. I tested glossy clear over Rustoleum "Steel" (a nice, VERY shiny silver) and it dulled that too. Luckily it was on test material, not a model this time.

Use several coats so it's thick enough to survive dings without too much base showing through. Don't use too much at once, due to the way it develops its shiny coat. And give it time to dry. The "steel" requires 48 hours per coat, and I'll bet other metallics are similar. Very light spot touch ups can be done in the first hour, but after that, give it time to dry.

I'll test some more, and try polyacrylic and polyurethane clear overcoats in testing, when I get more aluminum and repair the damage to the Kappa. Hopefully after several days of drying I'll be able to mask over the steel portions without peeling them off.
 
Back
Top