Alright alright alright! Big day Thursday, October 26th. Refusing to let outside temps dictate my pack life, I researched low temperature spray painting on the train ride home from work as stated in a reply before this post. I read about people placing their rattle cans in a bucket of warm to slightly hot water. They also said to keep the parts to be painted warm indoors until the very moment it was time to paint. Then to bring the parts inside to dry/cure in better temperatures. I decided this was my game plan.
I get home and change clothes to something I didn't mind getting paint on. I drew up a bucket of hot tap water, shook up the can of dupli-color truck bed coating and a can of krylon satin black (non fusion) paint and placed them in the hot water bucket.
Then I grabbed the primed pack shell and started to mask off areas that I don't want textured. Firstly, I highly recommend not cheaping out and spend the money on good masking tape. This blue painters stuff is thicker and rips better without ripping in strange detections as you're trying to get it off the roll like the cheap stuff. You can also tear long pieces in half length wise with relative ease. It's the perfect amount of tacky to stay on but not lift paint or leave residue when removed.
Endorsement aside, for the cyclotron rings, I started by putting masking tape on the sides of the rings. I got it as flat to the cyclotron surface as possible and made sure it didn't go too far and crinkle or bend onto the cyclotron face at all. Then I wrapped it around the sides being careful to keep it level/flat. Once I got completely around the ring I tore it off the roll leaving about a 1/4 to 1/2 inch of overlap.
I then just simply pressed the raised edges down over the top of the rings one spot at a time. Once all the tape was pressed down I ripped off a couple pieces to fill the gap in the center. Lather, rinse, repeat for all the rings.
Did the same for the eda discs.
Since part of the powercell face is covered with tape in that pic also, I'll talk now about masking for straight edges and corners. The name of the game is go slow and pay attention to positioning. I used a continuous piece for the long uninterrupted straight edges. I tried to rip the tape at slight acute angles inwards when at the corners so I could meet up the next piece of tape 90° to the first without messy overlap past where I wanted it masked off. I didn't want to have to make any razor cuts. If the tape doesn't rip in an acute inwards angle, I rip it off before the corner and use a separate smaller piece with the desired tear. When laying it down I make sure the edge remains straight with the long piece of tape it's extending.
For in between ribs I ripped small pieces eyeballed to the width of the gap. I laid them down slowly being careful to keep the straight tape edge level to the edge I was masking.
For the powercell ribs I ripped off a piece a little longer than the rib. Then I'd rip it in half length wise. I laid one half of it onto a side first like the rings, putting the straight side to the powercell surface.
Being vertical makes this a little trickier to get it to stay put at first. Once I would get it to stay in position I used a ruler to press it to the edge of the rib. Then I'd fold the rest over onto the face of the rib. Repeated the process with the other half of the tape.
The top part of the rib is easy for the powercell and crank gen. Since the whole face surface was to be masked off, I just took the excess part of the tape and folded it over the top bending it a bit to the the outside of the rib top and its side. I didn't have to worry about it being clean, just needed the the top and edges masked. At the bottom of the ribs I just wrapped the tape under and into the inside of the shell. Then I used a mix of long and tiny pieces to fill in the rest of the powercell face. Outside first then insides is the cleanest and easiest way I find to mask things.
Didn't document the crank generator as it's close to the same process as the power cell.
The gun mount was a bit different since I didn't want the face masked, just the ribs. I started with the top/front side of the ribs. Ripped shorter lengths of tape in half and started at the tips of the ribs. I positioned the starting edge of the tape slightly past the middle of the tip and bent it around the corner. I ripped it off before it made the curve to the side of the gun mount.
I used a ruler to press it to the side. Then I folded the tape onto the rib face starting at the tip then the side. Repeated for the other half of the tape and rib side starting with overlapping the first piece at the tip midway point.
At the sides, I basically did the same as the powercell ribs with the exception of when I got to the top. Instead of bending the tape slightly outwards, I pulled inwards since I already had covered the sides of the tops and needed to keep it as clean as possible.
Then I took care of the crank gen box. Not much different than anything else. Just more decisions to be made of what to mask or not.
Advice for masking, again, go slow, take your time, pay attention, reposition pieces as many times as needed to get clean lines. Think it through. This whole process took me about 65 minutes. But I didn't need to make any trim cuts or use blades which can easily make cut lines or accidental scrapes.
By the time I was done masking it dropped 4° outside from 59° at 3:30pm to 55° at 5:15pm. I thought, holy crap, please don't go lower. I knew the truck bed coating wanted temps between 68° to 90° according to its label. So I grabbed the can of krylon satin black and read it. Waddaya know, it says 40° to 80°. I decided to spray the parts black last and texture the pack first due to this newly gleaned knowledge.
I removed the truck bed coating can from the bucket of now warm water and left the satin black in there. Dried the can off and shook the crap out of it for two minutes before taking it and the pack shell to the balcony. Got the first coat on.
I really had to spray the bed coating on in sweeping movements. It's not forgiving at all if you stall in the slightest or change directing mid sweep. You can see where I did just that next to the gun mount and right under it on the cosmetic spacer. It was a smooth pooled glob of material. I tried wiping it off with a gloved finger. It sort of streaked out. I just tried to level it off, spot sprayed it, and hoped for the best on the next few coats.
In the last two pics up there, if you look closely, you can see where the plastic tarp blew onto the nubby bottom synchronous plate, the one to the left of it, and the edge of the angled injector line entrance block. I removed the tarp from it carefully trying not to freak out. Placed some more scrap mdf on it to weigh it down, and tried to pat the stuff down nicely. It looked worse and more predominant in person. E gahd!
I really like that you only have to wait 5 minutes between coats with the bed coating. I placed the can back into the warm water bucket and used the time to spread out some Harbor Freight ads onto the bathroom floor. Then dried the can off again and went back to the balcony shaking it like a mofo.
Second coat went on great. The stalled areas showed promise as did the bottom two synchronous plates. The injector line block still had the slight wrinkle towards the edge but nothing horrible.
5 minutes of waiting again. Into the warm bucket of water the can went. Used the time to place two 2x4 sections on top of the previously placed Harbor Freight ads. This was so I could easily lay down the shell while only touching it from underneath/the inside. It also was to prevent the newspaper from sticking or crinkling onto the coating.
Got the third and final coat on. The stalled areas are now imperceptible to any mishaps. Excellent! The two bottom plates were much better but not perfect. Only I will notice it especially with them being on the bottom of the pack. There was still the slight weirdness on the injector line block, but not too bad. Not worried about it. Very happy with the results!
I brought the shell inside being very careful where I touched it and to not bump into anything. Laid it onto the 2x4s in the bathroom.
The label has no information of total curing time which is annoying. So I'm just going to wait a week and monitor it for takiness before I spray it with metallic silver.
I was really happy to see the temps were holding out at 55°. I removed the can of satin black from the bucket and dried it off. Then I dumped out the water and replaced it with new hot water and put the second can I had of satin black in there. While shaking the can I took out the long board of metallic silver parts outside. Started spraying and realised I was about to paint the v-hook and cable clamps black. Caught myself just in time. The v-hook barely got some overspray but it actually makes it look nice and slightly grimey. Brought them inside and continued painting the board of parts.
Then I got a hanger of parts and brought it outside while shaking the can. Hung it on the conduit pole and sprayed. Brought out another hanger while shaking, sprayed, repeat. Once the last hanger of parts was out and sprayed, I did another pass of paint starting from the board of parts and moving to the first hanger on down. So two coats of satin black, boom, done. Some silver was still shinning through so I went inside to give it time to dry a little before the next coats.
Then I noticed I forgot the grips and took them outside. You can see them sitting there unpainted lol.
So in the interim I removed the masking tape from the textured shell. I wanted to do this before it got too tacky which would risk pulling up the surrounding material. Nothing too special with this process. Just rubbed my finger on some tape until an edge would roll up. Then I'd grab it and peel at a medium pace. Not too fast as this stuff tends to string out when stretched quickly. It all came up pretty well with slight exceptions around the bottom two ribs of the gun mount. It slightly wrinkled around the edges of those ribs. I patted it down with my fingernail a little in a random pattern. I might be able to scrape some away later when it cures, but it's barely noticeable in person.
Loving this! Neat contrasting look with the smooth primer and textured black. Getting realty excited, but how am I going to wait a week? Ahhhhh! Not going to make Halloween, so next deadline is the Chicago thanksgiving parade! That should be doable.
The demasking only took 15 minutes so I chilled for another 15 or so. Then back to the urban balcony spray booth.
The first can of black was empty so I removed and dried off the second can. Then sprayed starting with the grips, then the board, and lastly the hanger parts. By then the grips were dry to the touch so I repeated the pattern.
Tip: spray underhangs first to avoid buildup and drips. This worked out great except the rear cylinder for the thrower still had unpainted underhangs upon close inspection. So I waited until it was dry to the touch and flipped it over to spray its missed undersides. I got them and waited some more.
While waiting I used the remainder of the second can to spray the motherboard. I forgot to get pics as the fiancee came home and I was distracted showing her the progress made. I went to flip the rear cylinder back over and it was sticking to the board. Damn it! Should have put it on a hanger as it peeled up paint. So I patted/smoothed the paint down with a gloved finger and spot sprayed it with what little was left of the paint. Just enough to get the job done! Not enough for a second coat on the motherboard.
Then I went inside to clean up and get Thai food for us. This is when I noticed a hanger containing the booster frame and ppd left in the living room. DOH! I new I forgot something. Well, I need to get more krylon satin black paint anyway. Crazy that the temp was still 55° at this time with the sun fully down.
That was all. Before bed parts were brought inside and shell with 2x4s were moved onto our kitchen table.
Staaaaaaaaay tuned!