Well the red wrinkle paint I ordered to paint my alloy valve cover for the Spit finally arrived. Pre-heated the oven to 200 degrees (wife @ work) and prepped the surface per instructions. Sprayed the valve cover with three heavy coats and noticed it immediately started to show some runs. Well since I'm doing this @ lunch I was sort of in a hurry so I kept going. I popped it in the oven and 20 minutes later it came out beautifully with very minimal runs showing. On just a flat surface it would have been a piece of cake. But with the vertical sides of the valve cover I think that lighter coats might have been better advised. However, you can still see the runs so my plans are is to sand the runs down, respray and pop back into the oven. For those of you concerned about fumes there weren't any that I could detect. Had the door to the kitchen open and exhaust fan on. The proof though is when my wife comes home from work. Anyway I'll post again after I repaint and let you know how it turns out.
fingers crossed buddy - Have a bag packed just in case
While I do not have an SO to worry about. I do have a bird.. and they are VERY suseptible to fumes. Maybe I will exile her to the bedroom while I do this
Well the wrinkle valve cover didn't come out quite as well as I had hoped that it would. I followed all the prep directions as far as scuffing the surface, cleaning it thoroughly then wiping it down prior to spraying with a solvent and letting it dry again. The humidity was well above 40%. First mistake. The second mistake was laying the coats down too thick. They started to run (probably because of the humidity). Third mistake was popping it in the oven to cure instead of letting it dry for 48 hrs.. In re-reading the instructions it basically said let it dry for 48 hours. Cure in 200 degree oven for 20 minutes. I took it to mean either let it dry for 48 hours or you can speed the process up by curing it in the oven. Five hours after taking it out of the oven the paint was still somewhat "soft". Looked at a few videos on Utube and they pretty much confirmed where I went wrong. Well the good news is wrinkle paint is easy to touch up so I'll be sanding down the rought spots, repsraying and letting it dry for 48 hrs before curing it in the oven. Everything I read said its a long process. Patience is the key to this project. I'll let you know the process. BTW, no issues with fumes in house or oven. the only evidence I left was a red paint smudge on the light switch in the kitchen.
I used to reprocess a ton of pieces with black wrinkle.
IMHO, you are better off stripping the old paint instead of trying to sand it.
Once the stripper softens the wrinkle, it just comes off in sheets.
Spray it with hot water to rinse, then wipe, or into the oven to dry.
You will generally have better control applying several light coats.
That's important with something shaped like a valve cover, it's too easy to get a too-thick buildup on the inside radius where the sides meet the flange.
I did my Spit valve cover with black wrinkle 30 years ago, and it still looks perfect.
Carter
Carter. Did you cure in the oven between coats? If not did you allow the 48 hours? My thought is to apply a thin coat, allow to dry till tacky(about 10 minutes) reapply, allow to tackify repeat until good coverage. Allow to dry 48 hours then. Bake when the wife is away.
Carter, that's good advice about the stripping. I checked the valve cover again @ lunch and the paint is still somewhat soft. I think its time to start over now I know (i hope) what not to do. Any comments to what porksboy was asking about how long should you wait between coats?
In reply to porksboy: No cure between coats, like you say, just let it flash off a bit. With light coats, that can be as short as a couple of minutes. The company made Aero communications and Nav equipement, so lot's of 19" relay rack panels, but also oddly shaped aluminum castings. I even had to do screw heads for the relay rack panels in black wrinkle; would poke them into holes insheets of cardboard, paint 200 hundred at a time.
triumphcorvair wrote:
The humidity was well above 40%. First mistake.
Wow. I guess there are about 3 days a YEAR that you could use that in Georgia