How do I paint Flake & Flat together?

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PostPosted: Fri Oct 03, 2014 12:11 am
I have been looking everywhere for guidance on this and can't seem to find info anywhere about it!

I have a vision to paint my bike with holographic silver flake and matte black. I will be taping off one color, cutting an ornate design and shooting the next color over it. Here is my dilemma:

If I shoot the flake, then clear it, sand it, buff it, and get it smooth shiny and pretty for the matte black ...by the time I tape, and unmasked my design, the window of time to shoot my matte is no longer there. Could I scuff the clear around my tape for adhesion or am I looking for trouble. You see I want the glossy poppin flake next to that flat finish. It would seem obvious to do it this way to avoid hard lines between the layers.

Or...do I spray matte black first, because I won't have to sand and polish or wait so long to tape, cut out design, and shoot a clear coat with micro flake in 1-2 coats (as opposed to using several layers of intercoat clear with clear over it the first way). I don't want a hard line between the two colors. Is there a trick to this? Also worried shooting flake in clear might not come out smooth without a proper wet sand and buffing. This would obviosly be an issue for the matte black.

Can what I'm envisioning even be done? Tips and advice would be greatly appreciated!

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PostPosted: Fri Oct 03, 2014 12:20 pm
It's hard to avoid a hard line in the situation you describe. Depending on complexity you could edge-mask the flat black with rounded foam tape (which is intended to leave a soft masking line), mask the flat black surfaces - then shoot the gloss clear on the rest of the surfaces.

Flakes have to go in the intercoat clear (clear base), not clear coat -- it'll be a disaster if you try to distribute the flake in the clearcoat itself.



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PostPosted: Fri Oct 03, 2014 5:48 pm
Thanks for the tip on the tape. It is a complex design though. How many coats of flake/intercoat and clear could I get away with under normal taping situation?

If I could pull this off it would look hot.

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PostPosted: Fri Oct 17, 2014 8:35 am
This is what I would do. Spray the flake first in the basecoat clear. Then apply your urethane clear, wait a few days and let it cure ( shrink down) and sand it. Then repeat the urethane clear process until the surface is all leveled out. Then buff.
Now tape off the matte areas. VERY CAREFULLY scuff the surface up to and along the tape. Apply your matte finish. Then after the matte is done and the masking removed, pinstripe the line between the two using a product like One Shot. This will help "hide" and level the paint edge.
The reason you want to do the flame first, is that the flake layer will be thicker than the matte layer. So do the thick layer first and the thinner matte layer last.
Another trick to spraying flake, use a very course metallic basecoat that is the same color of the your flake, only just a bit darker. This helps the coverage of the flake rather than just spraying the flake on a sealer or black or whatever base.
Crazy Horse Custom Paint
And Author of How to Custom Paint Your Car
http://www.crazyhorsepainting.com/



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PostPosted: Sat Oct 18, 2014 5:37 am
What about spraying the whole thing with black basecoat, then tape off your graphics and spray them, remove the tape and clear everything with flattening agent in the clear. Now you have a matte finish over everything. To get the shiny finish back over your graphics you can tape around the edges of them and buff the matte clear within the boundaries of the tape?

I have no idea if this would work, really just posed this as a question to see what others thought. I've never used a flattening agent in clear before but have read if you buff it you'll get a shiny finish back. Even if you don't get it back to as shiny as regular clear you might get pretty close and with this method you wouldn't have any tape lines.

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