True Fire Paint

Intlwaters

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Joined
Jan 14, 2006
Messages
1,236
I was asked to write up some tips on painting but wanted to include some milestone photos. Unfortunately my camera was stolen and although I have plenty to borrow around me seemed to never be available when I was into a project. But now I have a camera phone so I shouldn't have that problem anymore. Plus for this post I realized that I had a past paint project that I posted on my facebook page that had some milestone photos that I can use to illustrate the process a bit here. However before I begin I want to share my thoughts on why I like and prefer nicely painted boats. To each is own and if you prefer not to due to weight concerns, lack of time, patience or ability I completely understand these are just my thoughts.

I have been around R/C boats since I was born. You can say I was born and raised on R/C boats. With that I remember what excited me about boats as a kid all the way up to what excites me now. Really not much has changed. Nice looking boats that look fast while even still on the boat stand and fast boats on the water usually do the trick for everyone. I can remember as a kid we would always pick the nicest looking boat to win. So even as a kid you notice that when a boat is painted nice it usually captures the attention of those that are looking on. It makes you want to stick around to see what the little boat can do. It creates expectation and anticipation. All of these things work together to increase interest and interest attracts more to the hobby/sport. As a marketing professional I know very well the importance of making something look good to attract interest. R/C Hobbies are the same way. The way I see it each boat is a representative of our hobby. It helps shape the impression of our hobby and those that participate in it. So for those people that choose to go the extra mile in a paint scheme I believe they are doing the entire organization a great service in marketing the world of R/C. I have told this story many times before but I will share it with you. I was the Co-Contest Director of the 2007 Nationals in San Jose, Ca. San Jose is one of the largest if not the largest populated city that the nats has ever been held. At just #10 on the list of largest cities in the country it has a population of approximately 1 million people. A city this size has lots of high profile activities so R/C boating is far down their list of events to consider.

When i met with the city officials I made a nice powerpoint presentation. At the beginning of the meeting the officials sat their with folded arms and it looked like they had no interest whatsoever. But in my presentation, I packed it with as many nicely painted boats on the stand and in action shots. Half way through they started to raise an eye brow, and heard words like neat and cool. Before I was finished the city manager uttered these words that I will never forget. He said... "Wow! I thought you guys were just a small backyard mom and pop organization but I can see you guys compete with really well polished equipment" and so we proceeded with the city to allow us to have the nats.

At that point I saw it was important to at least start out with a nicely painted boat as it may help open doors and improve the publics impression of what we do. So with that said, Let me continue with the paint scheme. It's a Twin 1.00 Eagle SGX-2 for a customer of CMDRacing.
 
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I am painting this boat with a House of Color Neon Yellow that fades or morphs into a myriad of Candy Yellow, Orange and Red True Fire Airbrush Effects sprayed over a Pavo Pearl Purple. This is all shot with House of Color. There are other brands like Perma Color, Auto Air and Creatix Airbrush Paint. I use House of Color because I just feel that their vibrance of colors are much better than everything else that is out there. I know there are lots of brands out there but I've done a lot of car shows and it seems like you can even pick out all the cars that used House of Kolor and who didn't. You can just see the difference. House of Kolor is more expensive but it is worth it. I use the entire system on this including Kosmic Komply Klear with 95% Gloss Properties (which means it drys to almost it's best possible shine even without polishing)
 
Here is the House of Kolor Neon Yellow
We was going to post on how to paint boats. same peration as painting real cars and trucks. Joe and I would like to learn how to paint true fire/flames. Joe got over 28 years in autobody&paint work me got alittle time in to it too. Some people cant aford some for thses paints. That why I'd been pushing budget paint lines ,like Duponts NASON,PPG shopline and Omini, NAPAs Crossfire,Valspare. All of them are afordable paint systems and just as great as the big dollar one,but save you in your wallet.
 
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Yah. Over time I will show how to paint with everything from rattle can to low budget paint systems. I have recently painted a boat using a brand I found at Pep boys because I wanted to find a lower cost alternative. I believe it is called Duplicolor. It seems to work well and has candy color and even chamillion color effects paints. It's 22 dollars a quart.
 
Being that I work often 12 hours and day at my day job and even Saturdays my time to paint is very short and few and far between. For that reason I find myself painting even into late hours of the night. I also have no place to do it in doors so I have to resort to other methods. Some of your may have to to the same. I would not recommend it but you have to make do which ever way suits your conditions.

Hanging For Paint

Here is the boat hanging by the swimming pool sweep broom pole between the slide and the fence. I have the parts of the boat hanging by hanger wire slipped in to the wholes on the sponson tubes of the sponsons, and the wholes in the transom that would be used to screw in the hardware. I used 3M Masking tape to tape the back side of the radio box and the rear quarter cover to the wire hanger. Once through the wholes I bend the wire hanger to keep the wire from sliding out of the whole. I bend the hanger in an "L" or "U" shape against the flat cover to give more leverage for the tape to hang onto. The rigidity of the hanger with the hook shape in the boat parts helps keep it from spinning around when you spray it. You can also use multiple hangers for example in two holes in the transom or both whole in the sponson tubes to keep the boat more secure. This is what I had started more recently.

Hanging the item allows you paint all surfaces at once versus laying on flat surface paint the top side, waiting for that to dry then painting the bottom side. Like I said. I don't have much time on my hands so I have to find the quicket method to get things done.

Base Coat

In this case (again to save me time) Andy was kind enough to sand the boat down with 180 and mask it off so I didn't have to do that. But usually I start with sanding the boat, whether it be wood, carbon fiber, or fiberglass, with 180. This ensures that the surface is rough enough for the top coats to grab onto. In the past I used 400 to start with and I just had too many problems with the paint peeling enough. Especially on the bottom and around the radio box edges where you have to constantly tape and untape even while using the slow and careful method of peeling the tape low and at a right angle away from the taped surface.

So here is the boat in the middle of the basecoat phase. Using House of Kolor bright white base I put on 3 coats. You can probably get away with one solid coat. My brother (the Autobody Journeyman) often scolds me for using too much materials and too much time to get the project done. As mentioned however, this is just the way I have done it. You may have a different method that works for you better. I've just seen paint jobs where they didn't use enough paint so rather not see that in my projects. On a big 1 inch twin I wasn't all that concerned with the weight of the extra paint.
 
Oh! FOOTNOTE:

In case some of your have missed it on the other post about stripping paint off of a boat here is my 2 cents that I posted on that and surface prepping.

Well...

My brother has schooled/scolded me many a time about being too timid with surface prep. Claiming I take too long. With him being an autobody journeyman he disassembles, cuts, welds, reassembles, sands, primers, sands, primers, sands, colors, clears, wet sands, and polishes a whole front end in the time that I would still be sanding. LOL!

His first gripe was that I was sanding with too smooth of sandpaper. He said use 80 grit and he was right. 80 grit would rip the paint right off. I would say a Sport 40 would take approximately an hour to sand all the paint off.

Then he suggest that I prime with FeatherEdge Primer.

Keep in mind that for Autobody Specialist it's all about speed. The more cars they can whip out the more they make. They can't sit around waiting for paint to dry. LOL!

The FeatherEdge Primer is a Catalyzed primer with outstanding fill properties. It's catalyzation also allows you to control how fast you want it to dry with the amount of catalyst you put in it. It can dry so you can sand in an hour. And it sands easily with it quickly turning to powder.

I dry sand using a special powder treated sandpaper. I think it's 180 grit. It's not marked so I forget. The powder in the sand paper helps keep the sand paper from clogging. I can sand a primered boat smooth within the next hour. However, it most likely will take another coat to sand fill and sand out the deep scratches 80 grit leaves so that's another hour to prime and let dry then sand again.

But in about 4 hours I have strip sanded the boat, primed and sanded it twice making it ready for for color coating.

Using automotive paint I can color coat. Wait an hour, (hour 5), Mask and paint again (hour 6) let flash 15 to 30 minutes. Add Decals and Clear Coat. (Hour 7 and 8). In one day if I want to hustle through it I can strip, prime, sand, prime, sand, color, mask, color, decal and clear in an 8 hour period. It's a lot of work in one day and you are surely tired But I did it. I painted two boats for my dad over the fathers day weekend last year using this method.
 
Seems I have run out of upload quota. I will have to find an alternative and will continue then.

Today I will attempt to complete a full strip down of a my Aeromarin Titan mono, prep, paint, decal, clear and still have time to spend time with my girlfriend this later this afternoon. I will post that later.
 
Okay. It looks like it work. Thanks Tom.

Here is the Neon Yellow Applied. You can also see a corner of the scale boat I was rotating in between coats. I put three coats of the Neon to be sure I get a deep rich Yellow that won't fade quickly. House of Kolor also make a sunscreen clear to help reduce fading. In some cases I have put down a coat of clear in between every coat of neon color to help aid in keeping the Neon color from fading. This technique reduced fading to almost zero even after several seasons of sun exposure however in this case because of I didn't want to weigh the boat down too, too heavy even though it is a Twin 1 inch I opted not use that technique.

NeonYellowBaseApplied.jpg
 
Yah. Over time I will show how to paint with everything from rattle can to low budget paint systems. I have recently painted a boat using a brand I found at Pep boys because I wanted to find a lower cost alternative. I believe it is called Duplicolor. It seems to work well and has candy color and even chamillion color effects paints. It's 22 dollars a quart.
I've paint some of my boats with dupi-color rattle can paint and clear over them with urethane automotive paint. the 07 oberto was done in dupi-color. the chamillion color effects paint form dupont when it first came out in the early 90's was 250.00 aquart.
 
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Yah. Over time I will show how to paint with everything from rattle can to low budget paint systems. I have recently painted a boat using a brand I found at Pep boys because I wanted to find a lower cost alternative. I believe it is called Duplicolor. It seems to work well and has candy color and even chamillion color effects paints. It's 22 dollars a quart.
I've paint some of my boats with dupi-color rattle can paint and clear over them with urethane automotive paint. the 07 oberto was done in dupi-color. the chamillion color effects paint form dupont when it first came out in the early 90's was 250.00 aquart.
Yah. I remember when the chamillion paint came out it was the thing to have for the car show circuit. : )
 
After the Yellow is appllied with the spray gun by the way I used and airbrush to add the Pavo Purple. As you can see I filled in with solid color then began some loose wavy patterns. This was the beginning of the true fire flames to lay back over the purple. I wanted and irregular patter to lay the True Filre effect on top of. This method helps the blending of the True Fire Effect from the Neon Yellow to the Pavo Purple

AddingPavoPurple.jpg
 
Here is the center section of the rigger. Unfortunately I did not take step by step pictures of the True Fire Effect Application method so tomorrow I will pull out one my old True Fire paint schemes and attempt to walk through the steps even though the boat is already done. Stay Tuned.

CenterSectionwithFire.jpg
 
Here is the center section of the rigger. Unfortunately I did not take step by step pictures of the True Fire Effect Application method so tomorrow I will pull out one my old True Fire paint schemes and attempt to walk through the steps even though the boat is already done. Stay Tuned.
Roger you know what might be a better Idea,Maybe you can do a step by step video of it? hey Its a thought..
 
Here is the center section of the rigger. Unfortunately I did not take step by step pictures of the True Fire Effect Application method so tomorrow I will pull out one my old True Fire paint schemes and attempt to walk through the steps even though the boat is already done. Stay Tuned.
Roger you know what might be a better Idea,Maybe you can do a step by step video of it? hey Its a thought..
Yah I was planning to on the next project that I use the effect on. I have just done it so much I've chilled out on it a bit to work in some other effects. But this does give me the excuse to bring it back.
 
Here are the materials to create your "True Fire" effects. To get the depth in the flame you need to use to create layers of both opaque and candy paint. I use House of Kolor but there are other brands out there that offer what is also referred to as Transparent colors. I have never used anything but House of Color but I would assume they would have at least a similar effect. I have a list of House of Kolor paint however. They are as follows.

Fast Dry Reducer

Black Basecoat

Molly Orange

Chrome Yellow

Tangerine Candy Basecoat

Apple Red Candy Basecoat

Pagan Gold Candy Basecoat

White

Intercoat Clear

Passion Pearl Purple

These colors are also available in House of Kolor Kit form Here Cost is 49.95

There are other True Fire Paint Kits but actually after just reviewing a few places online it appears that the House of Kolor kit is the cheapest however if you still want to check other options you can check out Creatix and Auto-Air. These are airbrush compatible paints so you will want to have an airbrush on hand as well. I use the Badger Crescendo It cost about $100.00 to check it out Click Here. Click Here

I also have a set of 4 or 5 stencils that I cut out of compressed mat board. These stencils provide a guidance for the patterns that you will need to create the True Fire effect,

TrueFireMaterials.JPG
 
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