At 5:31 AM +0000 5/12/02, olympus-digest wrote:
>Date: Sat, 11 May 2002 10:46:18 -0400
>From: Ed Senior <newshawk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: [OM] Touching-up black finish
>
>Is it possible to touch up the black finish on camera bodies? If so,
>what would you recommend for a good touch up paint?
In general, the best paint one can buy for metal surfaces is automotive paint,
which is widely available in auto-parts and auto-body repair stores, in a wide
variety of colors, including Hearse Black. Also available are suitable
chromate-conversion-coating chemicals, primers, sprayers for small jobs, etc.
The best approach is to remove the metal part from the camera, wet-sand all
surfaces to be painted, towel dry, allow to dry in the Sun for an hour,
spray-paint the part in three thin coats with air-drying periods between,
followed after a few days air drying with a few hours baking in a toaster over
at 200 degrees farenheit. Don't hurry to the baking step, or the paint will
bubble.
If the old paint is really bad, it may be best to use a methylene-chloride
based paint stripper to remove all the paint, and start from scratch.
For touch-up, automobile dealers sell little bottles and spraycans of touch-up
paint, so look for a car with paint that matches the camera, and buy that
color. The brushable touch-up paint may need to be thinned with whatever
solvent the paint manufacturer recommends for that paint, most likely a solvent
like acetone or toluol. It's critical to use a compatible solvent.
Automotive paints can be quite glossy, so some experiments with mixing in a
little ultra-flat black paint may be in order. The paints being mixed must
have compatible solvents, or the result will be a curdled mess.
Joe Gwinn
OT Story: Twenty years ago I bought a new hose reel to store garden hoses near
the outside faucet. The reel is a half-cylinder made of steel that was painted
with a bad quality of ugly green paint. I stripped it all off, right down to
the bare steel, then used automotive chromate- conversion coating followed by
three or four coats of automotive red primer, air dryed for two days, then
baked in the kitchen oven at 200 degrees for four hours. (It didn't smell that
bad as it baked, but I would do it first and seek forgiveness later.)
Rust-Oleum red primer would have also worked. The red primer was almost
exactly the color of the house, so I left it at that. The hose reel has been
in service ever since, and shows no sign of rust or wearthrough of the paint
film. Joe
< This message was delivered via the Olympus Mailing List >
< For questions, mailto:owner-olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx >
< Web Page: http://Zuiko.sls.bc.ca/swright/olympuslist.html >
|