trouble painting

[jbdesigns]

hey guys, not sure if this is the right place, or if im even allowed to post a pic of a spoon?? haha

here is my issue, no matter how much heat i put to the spoon, the first amount of paint i apply goes like this... applied by tapping the brush


then best thing i do is just keep loading the paint up and keep heating...
any ideas why this happens, or how to get it to lay smooth from the start?

would it be better to mask of the entire spoon and dip it?

 

[Kdog]

Good Question. Been fighting the same thing. Hot enough to PC it gets lumpy. Just a note, sometimes the lumps and bumps will level out during cure.

Fluid bed helps I just finished a few trials in mine and they are close to what I want.

Powder Water - a liquid that mixes with PC then you can airbrush. Coating needs to dry before PC, coating is fragile so, I coat them, carefully hand on oven rack, stick rack in oven, leave door open and turn on a small fan to help evaporate the liquid after overnight drying, close door and cure.

IMO, best finish will be airbrush using acrylics, just not as durable as I would like.

 

[jbdesigns]

is it that the spoon isnt hot enough?

 

[Fatman]

Brush tapping takes practice - if you have to tap more than once on a side of a spoon you could be getting more powder on the brush for the second tap, or tapped harder in one spot than the others. cure one up and post a pic of it.

 

[AtticaFish]

First question is what brand of powder are you using? Some are heavier/thicker/clumpier than others and harder to get a fine dusting of powder when you tap.

Best way i have found to get a smooth and even coverage of powder is to get the paint to come off the brush like it is a dust cloud. It really needs to spread out when you tap it. To get it to do that..... dip the brush in the powder to load it.... lightly tap it off once or twice back into the paint jar to get the bigger lumps of powder to fall off in to the jar..... now tap the brush hard over the spoon since a bunch of the powder already fell off back in the jar. Can also tap from farther above the spoon and the powder spreads out more. This will make the powder fly around more so make sure you have something below to catch the excess so you can reclaim it..... looks like you use a paper plate already.

To answer your other PM question, got my blanks from Jann's Netcraft. Have gotten both the casting and Pro Eye trolling spoons from them. Search results for spoons

 

[AtticaFish]

is it that the spoon isnt hot enough?

If the powder sticks at all to the spoon, it is hot enough. It will spread out and smooth some when it get completely up to temp during cure..... but it still looks to me like you do not have a complete coverage of paint.

 

[jbdesigns]

Brush tapping takes practice - if you have to tap more than once on a side of a spoon you could be getting more powder on the brush for the second tap, or tapped harder in one spot than the others. cure one up and post a pic of it.

i will have to do that, i have a bunch of jigs to do too.

First question is what brand of powder are you using? Some are heavier/thicker/clumpier than others and harder to get a fine dusting of powder when you tap.

Best way i have found to get a smooth and even coverage of powder is to get the paint to come off the brush like it is a dust cloud. It really needs to spread out when you tap it. To get it to do that..... dip the brush in the powder to load it.... lightly tap it off once or twice back into the paint jar to get the bigger lumps of powder to fall off in to the jar..... now tap the brush hard over the spoon since a bunch of the powder already fell off back in the jar. Can also tap from farther above the spoon and the powder spreads out more. This will make the powder fly around more so make sure you have something below to catch the excess so you can reclaim it..... looks like you use a paper plate already.

To answer your other PM question, got my blanks from Jann's Netcraft. Have gotten both the casting and Pro Eye trolling spoons from them. Search results for spoons

ya i just tap the crap out of it till it gets nice and eve, but that builds it up to much.
i will have to try lighter dustings i guess.
is there any durability issies if the pc is so thick, after baking?

 

[Bucko]

This is a hard one to describe in text. Best way I can think of is you want it to fall like a mist and not an avalanche. If you don't get enough on you can reheat and do it again. You can always add more but you can't take it off again.

 

[AtticaFish]

.....you want it to fall like a mist and not an avalanche......

^^^ YUP ^^^

A thick layer of cured powder holds up better than a thinner layer IMO. If the spoons (or spinner blades) are thin and the metal bends, even cured powder paint has a hard time staying together.

 

[Lost Pole]

Heat the spoon to where a light coat will stick but tap a heavy coat. Tilt it to get the exta heavy off. Might even corner tap it. Then heat to make that extra coat just stick if your doing another section.
Final heating should not be glossy. And cure should be monitored for changes in heat.
My lady converted me to a convection oven and I haven't had drops since. And can throw the heads against the ground w/o chipping. The heads just deny with paint attached.