epizootics
Tele-Holic
Hey guys, I'll start by saying that I'm not affiliated to the brand in any way. I'm basically posting this for the sake of reference. Many times I found myself hitting the board's search engine with more or less absurd key words, and more often than not, someone had already written about the stuff I was scratching my head about.
One of the things we Europeans struggle with is finding decent spray cans. The DuPont/Reranch/etc. products are usually too expensive to get shipped across the Atlantic or simply can't be exported internationally because of the safety restrictions.
What we're left with is a bunch of brands either aimed at the arts & crafts market or graffiti paint. The former are usually unreliable and don't come in very satisfactory colors and the latter includes some types of paint that aren't particularly suitable for guitars. We do have a few specialized brands, but they are stupidly expensive, and, in my limited experience, not necessarily satisfactory.
In all of those, the one brand that has given me consistent results so far has been the Belton Molotow Premium range. The cans are cheap (between 4 and 5 euros depending on where you get them), they have a wide range of colors (245 solid colors, plus an additional 15 in transparent) and are widely available in graffiti/art supply shops.
This stuff is supposedly a 'nitro-alkydal compound'. Now, I've painted guitars with MTN products (Spanish Montana) and their paint uses a modified alkyd base, and those take forever to harden. They feel (and smell) oil-based. The Molotow cans seem to dry and cure a lot faster. The MSDS states a 2.5 to 5% nitrocellulose content, and people report that they are compatible with other brands of nitro clear coats. That stuff dries hard in 24 hours.
Coverage is great - it doesn't take fifteen coats to get an opaque finish. I haven't used any primer coat on the guitars I painted with it. I did use a nitrocellulose-based sanding sealer (Hampshire Sheen, UK product) and it didn't create any adherence/bonding problems.
I warm up the cans by putting them in a pan of hot (not boiling) water ten minutes before I spray and giv'em a good shake (two minutes minimum). I tried all sorts of caps until going back to the stock one (blue circle, not too wide and not too narrow pattern).
By spraying thin coats, this stuff allows me to go from bare wood to final buffing in a week in warm weather. My schedule has been something like that:
+Day 1:
-Final sanding, up to 300 grit
-3 coats of wipe-on sanding sealer, one or two hours apart. Sand to 400 grit at the end of the day
-First color coat - three light passes, the wood's color should still be somewhat visible
+Day 2:
-Second color coat. Three more light passes. Should be opaque enough. If not, add an extra third coat the next day. NO SANDING in between coats.
+Day 3:
-Nothing...Unless a third color coat is needed...
+Day 4:
-If the paint is dry enough (and it should be), fix any runs/drips by scraping them with a razor blade
-First coat of clear. Same as with color.
+Day 5:
-Second coat of clear, ending with a flood coat.
+Day 6:
-Nothing if everything went OK on day 5!
+Day 7:
-Scrape away the drips & runs if you got any. If you got any orange peel, wet sand & buff. If not...buff away. That's it. You're done.
A few pictures:
Sanding sealer on...
First color coat (went a bit heavy on the paint that day, I added an extra day for it to gas off)
Second coat
After the clear coat (you can see a fair bit of orange peel here!)
After wet sanding/polishing/assembly
This one was a 'riviera pastel'. Another instrument in 'azure blue light':
On both of these, I used the gloss clear coat from the same brand. One can of color and one can of clear was more than enough for each of them (one and a half cans of clear for both). I decided to weigh the empties so I could know how much was left in any given can.
-A full can weighs 442 grams (15.6oz)
-An empty can weighs 136 grams (4.8oz)
That's a primitive but efficient way to get a rough idea of how much you paint/clear you laid on for a coat. I know there might be slight variations from can to can, but the ones I weighed were in that ball park, give or take a couple of grams.
All in all, it costs me 8 euros in materials to finish a full-size guitar with a matching headstock! Not bad.
So...There you go. I hope this stuff will be useful to some. Once again, no affiliation to Belton/Molotow. But if you're in Europe, that's honestly the best (and cheapest) option I have found so far.
One of the things we Europeans struggle with is finding decent spray cans. The DuPont/Reranch/etc. products are usually too expensive to get shipped across the Atlantic or simply can't be exported internationally because of the safety restrictions.
What we're left with is a bunch of brands either aimed at the arts & crafts market or graffiti paint. The former are usually unreliable and don't come in very satisfactory colors and the latter includes some types of paint that aren't particularly suitable for guitars. We do have a few specialized brands, but they are stupidly expensive, and, in my limited experience, not necessarily satisfactory.
In all of those, the one brand that has given me consistent results so far has been the Belton Molotow Premium range. The cans are cheap (between 4 and 5 euros depending on where you get them), they have a wide range of colors (245 solid colors, plus an additional 15 in transparent) and are widely available in graffiti/art supply shops.
This stuff is supposedly a 'nitro-alkydal compound'. Now, I've painted guitars with MTN products (Spanish Montana) and their paint uses a modified alkyd base, and those take forever to harden. They feel (and smell) oil-based. The Molotow cans seem to dry and cure a lot faster. The MSDS states a 2.5 to 5% nitrocellulose content, and people report that they are compatible with other brands of nitro clear coats. That stuff dries hard in 24 hours.
Coverage is great - it doesn't take fifteen coats to get an opaque finish. I haven't used any primer coat on the guitars I painted with it. I did use a nitrocellulose-based sanding sealer (Hampshire Sheen, UK product) and it didn't create any adherence/bonding problems.
I warm up the cans by putting them in a pan of hot (not boiling) water ten minutes before I spray and giv'em a good shake (two minutes minimum). I tried all sorts of caps until going back to the stock one (blue circle, not too wide and not too narrow pattern).
By spraying thin coats, this stuff allows me to go from bare wood to final buffing in a week in warm weather. My schedule has been something like that:
+Day 1:
-Final sanding, up to 300 grit
-3 coats of wipe-on sanding sealer, one or two hours apart. Sand to 400 grit at the end of the day
-First color coat - three light passes, the wood's color should still be somewhat visible
+Day 2:
-Second color coat. Three more light passes. Should be opaque enough. If not, add an extra third coat the next day. NO SANDING in between coats.
+Day 3:
-Nothing...Unless a third color coat is needed...
+Day 4:
-If the paint is dry enough (and it should be), fix any runs/drips by scraping them with a razor blade
-First coat of clear. Same as with color.
+Day 5:
-Second coat of clear, ending with a flood coat.
+Day 6:
-Nothing if everything went OK on day 5!
+Day 7:
-Scrape away the drips & runs if you got any. If you got any orange peel, wet sand & buff. If not...buff away. That's it. You're done.
A few pictures:
Sanding sealer on...
First color coat (went a bit heavy on the paint that day, I added an extra day for it to gas off)
Second coat
After the clear coat (you can see a fair bit of orange peel here!)
After wet sanding/polishing/assembly
This one was a 'riviera pastel'. Another instrument in 'azure blue light':
On both of these, I used the gloss clear coat from the same brand. One can of color and one can of clear was more than enough for each of them (one and a half cans of clear for both). I decided to weigh the empties so I could know how much was left in any given can.
-A full can weighs 442 grams (15.6oz)
-An empty can weighs 136 grams (4.8oz)
That's a primitive but efficient way to get a rough idea of how much you paint/clear you laid on for a coat. I know there might be slight variations from can to can, but the ones I weighed were in that ball park, give or take a couple of grams.
All in all, it costs me 8 euros in materials to finish a full-size guitar with a matching headstock! Not bad.
So...There you go. I hope this stuff will be useful to some. Once again, no affiliation to Belton/Molotow. But if you're in Europe, that's honestly the best (and cheapest) option I have found so far.
