Have any of you painted metal flake in the not too distant past? I'm going to paint my Delmont (custom with shaved door handles and a cowl induction hood) with metal flake but have no experience with anything but enamels and urethanes (base coat clear coat). If possible I want to keep the bright red as the base.

Thanks,
Chris

 

You may want to check for the answer at autobody101.com
Great site for a question like this

 

Thanks!

 

Santa is bringing a Flake Buster so I'm now committed to full metal flake. From what I read you lay down your base coat, spray on an intermediate coat of clear (thicker clear to suspend the flakes better), knock down the flakes and then clear it.

 

if it mottles use a dust coat to calm it down and do not do the trunk or hood side to side it will probably tiger stripe go the entire width top to bottom medium wet.

 

There are a couple things to do to get metal flake and metallic to lay nice. The first is set the fan of your gun quite wide. When you are spraying, don't go in any particular pattern, but rather spray kind of erratically around while making sure you get good coverage. This is going to cause more overspray and use more paint, so be prepared for that. When doing multiple coats, don't leave as much time in between coats, and I usually step down to a lower temp reducer to give the paint more time to level and the coats to blend. On the last coat of the metal, lightly fog it all over to get a good finish dusting.

 

Some good advice, but I think you meant to say,"high temp reducer"......

 

Whoops, mental slip haha. Yeah I meant to say High Temp.

 

Maybe wise to get some sheet metal pieces like an old hood or trunk lid and practice before hand to get the feel of it.

 

Thanks for the replies and I will practice. We have an old set of rally wheels that will be some metal flake color before the end of winter!