Which air brush do you guys use ?

[Vince]

badger 360, badger 100sg, and iwata hp-c

[azrhino]

Wow! I never would have thought to use superglue in such a manner.

I never would have thought you could run it through an airbrush.

[yorkshire_keith]

Azrhino calm yourself.

Not all Cyanoacrylates are glue. 2 Pack acrylic is a paint and activator cyanoacrylic paint ( also known as 2k ) which used to be used extensively by the auto body repair industry. It's far more durable and waterproof than cellulose and it cures quicker. I can put a coat of 2k clear gloss about 1mm thick over for example Humbrol water base acrylics, put it in the oven at 80CËš and flat it down with 1200 wet and dry 3hrs later, polish it with a cutting paste to a brilliant gloss and put it in the post the next morning and it'll arrive without a mark on it but, as you might expect with the hardener containing cyanide, it's lethal. So most of the industry has switched to the new waterbased acrylic formulations which are safer but much softer and need a precise airflow and temperature controlled environment to cure properly.( even then a couple of full programme automatic car washes will have them looking twenty years old and as for tree sap....)

I can't afford to build myself that kind of facility in my garage anyway but Cellulose doesn't give the kind of Billiard Ball hard finish bikers want on their helmets or stand up to the constant contact with petrol round a tank filler.

I have the added problem that though Cellulose is far less harmfull than 2K The EEC are rumoured to be about to ban it for sale to the public which leaves me with 2k as the only long term option.

[big F]

I have the added problem that though Cellulose is far less harmfull than 2K The EEC are rumoured to be about to ban it for sale to the public which leaves me with 2k as the only long term option.

380289[/snapback]

The EEC are gonna ban it. Great they just love to balls up everything.

Just out of interest what paints do you recommend for painting crashhelmets ? i was thinking about doing a job on my spare later this year.

2K`s not too bad as long as you take the precautions and dont try to kill your pets or neighbours with it.

[azrhino]

My appologies, Keith. I was wondering if we might have been speaking two

different forms of English.

In this case, you were speaking English, and I was speaking American.

Thanks for the brief (and polite) tutorial.

Edited March 15, 2006 by azrhino

[yorkshire_keith]

Happy to be educational Azrhino, hope I wasn't teaching my grandmother to suck eggs ( how do you suck those things)

Well they haven't banned it yet BigF and my local auto paint stockist is still offering it to me so there you go even when the EEC makes a cock up they're so lumbering slow it takes them years and years to do it.

For crash helmets It depends on what your lid is made of as I'm sure you know Polycarb doesn't do well with any kind of solvent so you're stuck with what you can find that's water soluable. I wont touch 'em because of the legal implications if some ones head get's shattered in a lid I painted. Glass fibre and Kevlar are supposed to be fine with just about anything but I still do my best not to sand through the original paint just to flat it down so that what I put on doesn't actually come into contact with the stuctural shell of the helmet. I then put a coat of 2K or cellulose primer on (cellulose seems ok under other types of paint but no good ontop of them )followed by ford arctic white (coz it's cheap) to give the colours a bright even ground, flat that down with 800 grade W&D and start work. I will put on absolutely anything that sticks. Tamiya, Humbrol (waterbased not enamels)or 2k paints for base colours, translucent artists liquid airbrush acrylic inks to put on tints and shades. Sometimes brush painting lines or faces etc I've even use oilpaints for certain effects, It doesn't really matter because it's all going under three thick coats of 2k clear gloss (2k works really well over the top of stuff inc cellulose if it's been left for a couple of days first but not so good under things) which will then be sanded till it's like a billiard ball and given another coat or two of over thinned 2k(to reduce orange peel effect). Of course you can use 2k from start to finish if you want then it'll be flatter and you reduce the risk of a strange reaction between paints. I find I only get bad reactions when I introduce cellulose or the old fashioned spirit base enamels into the equasion and that's another reason I don't often use them. If I use cellulose the whole helmet has to be cellulose from start to finish and each layer you intend to mask over really needs time to cure to gain enough strenth to ensure the removal of masking tape doesn't pull it off. This leads to long jobs I can't be doing with.

Edited March 15, 2006 by yorkshire_keith