[R-390] Paint/Lacquer Sticks, redoing engraved panels

[nryan at mchsi.com]

Brilliant, Tisha!

Can you tell us some more about the glow-in-the-dark paint?

Vy 73 de Norman, KG4SWM

Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or doing it better. -- John Updike


----- Original Message -----
From: Tisha Hayes <tisha.hayes at gmail.com>
To: r-390 at mailman.qth.net
Sent: Thu, 26 Apr 2012 10:49:02 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: [R-390] Paint/Lacquer Sticks, redoing engraved panels

I use a pretty dense paint for redoing front panels. It is an aviation
paint that is normally used to do things like the struts on landing gear
and selected areas on an airplane. It bonds to just about anything and
after drying/ baking is beautiful looking. A dark shade of grey with a high
gloss finish.

The downside of this paint is that it tends to fill in the engraving and
makes it difficult to get good fill. I came up with a technique where I
paint and then have very deep engraving areas for letter filling with an
acrylic blend.

After I chemically strip a front panel and do the plastic spatula scrape I
sand the panel with scotchbrite pads (you can get different grits). Then I
apply a very thin layer of plaster to where the engraving will be and wipe
down and do a once over with a scotchbrite pad and a tacky rag (auto body
supply stores sell those). What you end up with is a shiny panel with white
lettering filled in flush. Then I shoot the paint (3-4 layers with light
sanding in between, this takes a few days to do). After the last paint
layer I let the panel dry at room temperature for a day. The paint is still
soft at this time.

Now I take a dental pick and poke down on each engraving, the plaster just
cracks and pops right out of the painted panel. I apply a water based latex
paint that is a blend of white and a glow-in-the-dark paint that shows up
as green in dark light but is off-white/clear in normal lighting. After I
do the wipe down on the letter fill and the acrylic dries for a few hours I
put the panel into my convection oven and heat the panel to 250 F (until
the thermostat bings to tell me it has reached the temperature and then I
turn off the convection heat but leave the ventilation fan running. I let
the panel slowly cool down all night long in the oven.

I end up with a really nice panel, with a very deep looking paint finish
and completely filled in lettering. With the glow-in-the-dark paint mix the
front panel will have a faint greenish glow that lasts all night long just
off of a few hours of normal room lighting.

My next project is to make new meter bezels out of off white transparent
plastic (like what you get on a coffee can lid). Heat transfer on new
scales that include S units with a dBm scale for the RF meter and mV, dB
for the line level meter, paint the backside of the plastic with the glow
in the dark stuff and add a very tiny white LED to the internals of the
panel meters to provide a diffuse white light. I would end up reversing the
color scheme on the meters from white/green on a black background to
white/red on a off white background that has a greenish glow (non
radioactive meter fronts that are much sharper lettering than the existing
meters).

-- 
Ms. Tisha Hayes/ AA4HA
-
"Life isn't about how to survive the storm, but how to dance in the rain"
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