Phase 2 Finished - Painting Complete

Phase 2 is finally finished! I received my second batch of AutoAir paints that I used this weekend in an 7 hour paint-a-thon thus bringing this phase to an end. Luckily, an entire week of cold, rainy weather broke for a warm and clear weekend allowing me to paint outside.

Slowly but surely the gold layers were built up on the parts until each one had even coverage. I barely had enough supplies to finish but the end product turned out great. I dare say even "pimp."

After the color, I used a urethene clear coat with a separate kicker for the gloss coat. I made sure to clean all the paint from my gun, seen here, soaking in thinner, to make sure the clear wasn't contaminated with any color.

Finally, after a long day of work (and a wicked migraine from the fumes, even through a mask) I finished the gloss coats. I made sure to take some photos of the parts in the sun to really capture the sheen and I'm very happy with the way they turned out. Now all I have to do is put the thing back together and hope the weather holds for a few rides before the snow!

Staining

This week I've been sick, and I'm still waiting on my next order of paint so I started staining the wood pieces with a dark walnut stain. Compared to the painting process it's pretty straightforward and the wood parts came out nice. I'm having a bit of a motivational problem at this point, but after I finish painting I'll be in the home stretch so I'm trying to keep the momentum.

Painting Continues...

This weekend I had some free time to start painting the brass colored parts. I unfortunately ordered too little paint to cover all the parts I had, so I made it stretch as far as possible and tried to get at least a middle-weight coat on all the parts.

The metallic paint was a lot different to work with than the red though. I don't think it's meant to be applied directly to sealer so it ran a bit. However, after evening out the coats the parts had a kind of oxidized look which came out pretty cool.

I've got more paint on the way, but I'm actually feeling a bit sick so the next few days will be a nice break. It's starting to get cooler, though, so the pressure is on to finish now.

Paint!

Here's some process photos showing the actual paint process. I'm using all AutoAir colors, starting with Dark Red, which is cut with 10% Flash Reducer. The reducer is a thinning and reactive additive that lets the paint dry faster and flow a lot more smoothly. The first step was a few coats of straight red.

After a solid red coat and 24 hours of curing in my hot-box shed it was time to add the magic - a blended, wine-colored shimmer paint combined with the red. Here's the paint being mixed.

Once I put a few coats of the shimmer paint on it was looking really purple, like a pimp moped or something. But after a few hours the brightness faded in to the base color, just as I had hoped, and produced what I call "Shimmer Blood." My low-quality iPhone camera and the poor lighting in the shed doesn't really do it justice, but the glittery maroon is going to look so awesome with the brass accents - I can't wait!

Also, a tip for anyone painting with an HVLP gun for the first time: I keep a big can of thinner nearby and run a tablespoon through the gun between every cup of paint to keep the nozzle clean. I also break the gun down every night and soak it in thinner to clean out any residue inside. I clogged the gun pretty bad the first night of priming and this seems to have fixed it.

Sealer

After the primer, I had to seal all the parts with either light or dark pain sealant. This fills in the gap of the primer and lets the paint bond to the lower layers more effectively. It's also kind of tacky so the paint should stick extremely well to the sealed parts.

For the maroon body parts I used the dark color and the lighter color for the parts that will be painted with the brass metallic color. When I start painting, I'll bag up the parts that are not being painted, then switch when I switch color.

Finally, FINALLY, I'm ready to paint!

Sanding Primer

After painting all the parts with my gray automotive primer, I had to sand down the rough texture with 1000 grit sandpaper for a really super-smooth finish. Most of the parts had very few dings so I think the finish should be fairly even. When I did this step, I had to make sure to wear gloves while sanding and handling of the parts. Any oil from my fingertips could affect how the final paint adheres to the frame so it's pretty important.

Here's a photo (just to prove to myself how much of a pain in the ass this was) showing all the parts in separate bags to keep dust and oil off them, ready to be sealed.

Primer

It's been a while since my last update, but that certainly doesn't mean I haven't been working. Last weekend I finished stripping and prepping the second set of smaller parts for paint including the chain guards, shocks, seat bars, etc. I finally got everything set up in the shed and got to it.

I'm using a mini-HVLP spray gun for all of my painting since the area of each piece is relatively small. I'm trying to minimize my overspray since this stuff is pretty expensive. It took some experimenting to see what my best material/air ratio was but the most important thing I found was that running thinner through the gun after every cup of material (and soaking it after use) kept it operating without any problems. I'm using a 1mm nozzle at 40psi for anyone who's curious.

As you can see, the shed out back of our house is the perfect place to hang parts. It's still about 90 or so during the day here (+10 in that sweatbox at least) so I shouldn't have a problem keeping the temperature above 72 for curing.

The next step for these parts is sanding with ultra-fine paper to remove any surface blemishes. The final paint will show anything that stands out so at the very least I need the body, tank and fenders as smooth as glass. Then it's sealer, then paint, then clear. It starts to snow in October so the pressure is on to get everything painted before then!