Quote:
Originally Posted by Keith Webb
Once the paint colours have been established and are repeatable the next question is what type of paint are people considering using?
A common cheap paint seems to be a spraying enamel. When a flattening agent is added to this it very quickly goes chalky and looks terrible.
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I suspect that's probably the first question Keith, as we need to specify the paint type at the time of colour matching.
Tony Baker provides much valuable information and advice concerning paint types on page 1 of this thread. I've since dealt with a few paint suppliers and each one has strongly recommended acrylic paint for matt applications. The reason they give is the far lower percentage of flattener required to achieve full matt finish. Flattener is bad stuff in any paint and the less used the better, as it results in loss of durability. Tony explains this well on page 1. In Tony's case he opted for low sheen or lustreless finish, whereas for camo vehicles I believe full matt finish is essential, which would require even more flattener, causing further loss of durability. This can be offset to some extent by the use of hardener, which Tony strongly recommends for all enamel applications, but given the inordinate amount of flattener required to produce full matt finish with enamel paint I'm worried about opacity problems, ie. the chalky appearance you mention Keith. Therefore I suspect acrylic is probably the way to go for our purposes. Enamel is cheaper but it's false economy if it requires regular repainting.
Any thoughts on the subject would be most welcome. I used some full matt acrylic myself last year and I'm 100% happy with the result. Plenty of colour depth and a year out in the weather hasn't changed that in the slightest. It's also extremely hard, unlike the chalky enamel repaint on the vehicle! Another consideration may be user friendliness, and everyone tells me acrylic wins hands down in this respect, including Tony on page 1. It so happens I've never used anything BUT acrylic on vehicles, which is probably just as well for an amateur like me! I used two-pack on a plywood boat once and it's certainly marvellous stuff, but definitely not suited to MV resto work IMO. Anyway it's probably impossible to flatten, judging by Tony's experiments with two-pack initially.