sigh painting

[lutchman]

hi guys, i am doing some custom work, i am using .75 pvc, which is white, and i am doing some v carving in the middle, the vcarve has to be brown and the rest of the work has to be red...is there any easy way to do this? i usually paint the entire work and sand of the top layer with a palm sander leaving the color of the pvc (white) and the vcarved portion remains whatever color i painted it in...

[jerry_stanek]

I would pint the piece then use a mask and route paint the routed part and remove mask

[joe]

LR,

Thanks for posting.

Jerry is correct with his suggestions. Here are a few more tips you could use. PVC will accept most paints. I'd start off by lightly sanding the surface. A red scotchbrite pad or 200p sand paper is what I'd use.

Red is one of the more difficult colors to get good coverage. I'd suggest ordering one of the NOVA COLOR opaque reds. Most red latex paints have tendency to remain sticky for days. Nova dries flat and isn't sticky. You may want to clear coat it for a gloss. They also sell the acrylic, water based, gloss. There are lots of good gloss latex clear's on the market.

After a good base coat of red then the mask goes down. Any vinyl mask will do. Once you've finished up with the V carving, it's best to paint around the edges with the red background color. This will fill in any little glitches. From there I would spray the letter color. Spraying is faster and gives a much cleaner effect.

I know you're a long ways off from Calif. but you might ask them for a color chart. It's like no other color chart on the market.

[RossMosh]

Bumping this for a little further elaboration.

I've done a few signs rolled/brushed on with Sherwin Williams exterior latex paint. I wasn't in love with it. It was a real pain blending the paint for touch up, it was sticky, and it didn't adhere nearly as well as I would have liked. Also the yellow Gerber mask didn't like sticking to it. I plan on using Nova paints since they seem so highly recommended and I'd like to spraying it on.

My question is: What kind of gun is recommended? I don't want to go out and spend real money for a gun yet so I bought the "recommended" Harbor Freight HPLV gun. It works in the little testing I've done but in the instructions, it pretty clearly says "don't spray latex". I'd like to use the HPLV gun because it barely has overspray and I don't have a spray booth, but if it's not going to work, then I don't want to ruin the sign. I can live with throwing away the gun after the job, but I'd prefer to use the right tool for the job. Is the Critter the way to go? Also is overspray a concern?

This will all be done on 1" white PVC (Komacel most likely).

[joe]

Ross,

Looks like your staying in there.

The HF spray gun will work but you'll need to clean it out soon after spraying. Nova is a good choice, dries fast and isn't sticky. Be sure to order, Opaque, Transparent or Translucent. You'll need their color chart for this.

It would help if you posted a photo of your project or a drawing.

Lets see if this is your process.

Sand the PVC.
Paint
Mask
Route
Paint.

What we don't know is the amount of detail and if this is a V Carve process. Don't have enough information to give much help without details.

[RossMosh]

Hi Joe,

I've been waiting for feedback from the client but here is the latest revision. I contacted Nova previously and I got their color chart in last week. I've been playing with the HF gun with an MDF project and my gut and the reviews tell me the 1.4 tip is going to be a bit tricky.

The top panel will be 1" PVC. I showed them two versions, one pocketed and one V-carved. The white will be 1/8" white ACM. This image is the pocketed/textured version obviously.

Our process has been scuff, prime, roller paint (3 coats typically), mask (which doesn't really stick), route, and then paint. Most of my sign work is smaller and done with Corian so it hasn't been an issue as that is very easy to finish. The PVC signs I've done have been simpler and I use the white PVC as the letter color.

[joe]

Ross,

Please allow me to ask a question or two about this project.

The illustration is very helpful. It appears the top panel is the Masthead and the lower panel isn't as permanent. If this is the case, they should be treated differently.

There is an age old problem with masking. While a mask works fine on some surfaces, some of the time, it may fail on others. I'd consider vinyl for the bottom sign.

In this case, the Masthead panel should have lots of body and thickness to it with some shading around the sides, top and bottom. This makes a sign take on more presents. Also a nice soft texture to the background could be used.

Just a thought or two.

Joe

[RossMosh]

Thanks for the suggestions.

For the bottom panel I had thought about vinyl, which is something we don't do, and I thought because it's not permanent, simply exposing the white PVC base would work and be equally cost effective.

As for the sign, I have a bit of wiggle room in the budget. I wasn't going to use a backerboard but run strips of PVC along the back for mounting purposes but I could have a piece of MDO added to the back making it a total of 1.75" thick. The texture I was going to be a .25" ball end mill texture produced in V-Carve Pro.

I'm curious if you could show me an example of the shading? I'm not exactly sure what you're talking about.

[joe]

Inside border Shading

[Mayo]

Ross - the "Who" on the bottom panel sounds incorrect on the heading. How about "Thank You to Everyone Whose Generous Financial Contributions Made This Park Possible"


Masking issues:
Masking can come with latex adhesive or solvent based adhesive.
Either of these can be incompatible with latex paint - depending on the chemicals in the paint. And depending on the masking being low tack, medium tack or high tack.

Another important step is after sanding or scuffing the PVC - what do you clean it with before you apply your paint. The wrong cleaner or no cleaner can sometimes cause the paint to come off when you remove your masking.

It would be great if the masking manufacturers would publish a list of specific brands of paint that their mask will actually stick to. This assumes that they have done testing on painted surfaces... which may or may not be the case.

[joe]

Words of wisdom from Mayo....

[jim shula]

Maybe this deserves a separate thread, but in the sand/paint/mask/route/paint sequence mentioned above, I've added another step and wondered if anyone does this. After I've painted the letters but before removing the masking, I'll take a drywall sanding sponge and go over the letters to flatten out the buildup of paint where the letters meet the flat part of the sign. I'm careful to keep the sponge flat so it won't go into the letters and other carved areas. I do this because in a few cases I've had the paint on the masking tear out of the paint in the letters leaving a slightly ragged, unclean edge.

[RossMosh]

Thank you for all the replies. I haven't updated because I've done several slight tweaks since posting this. Spoke with the client last week and found everything was close to approval. Called today to confirm to know if I could start ordering materials, bits, paint, ect. Found out the fence is not what they told me, the main donor wants significant changes, ect ect ect. Not exactly sure what I've been doing for the last month with all these revisions, but it should be interesting what they come back to me with in the near future.

As for what I've been doing:

I went ahead and bought a Critter and I've been playing with it. The HF gun has a tiny tip (1.4) which makes spraying latex difficult (at least for me as a new guy). As everyone has suggested, the Critter is a very user friendly gun. It may not be great for automotive painting but for signs, it really does a good job so thanks Joe and anyone else who has recommended it in the past.

As for the paint not sticking previously, I think it a combination of the paint and application. The paint didn't cover especially well with the roller but it was thick. It probably needed 24-48 hours to dry before recoat and I was doing 4-6 hours (as per the can's specs). I'd guess if I sprayed on the paint in 3-4 thinner coats, it would have been more successful. As for cleaning between steps, I stuck with soapy water and scuffed the PVC pretty well with medium grit sand paper.

With the masking, I have the "highly recommended" yellow Gerber mask. I'm hoping it behaves well with the Nova. I'm doing a test tomorrow with it on some sprayed Rustoleum which has dried smooth and hard so my guess is now that I'm spraying and not rolling, the masking issue will mostly eliminated. I'm also going to follow the suggestion I believe Joe made in a recent post of using a very sharp v-bit to cut the mask before actually doing the carving in hopes of getting a cleaner edge.

[joe]

Good going. Yes the Critter is excellent with latex paint. A little Flow Coat and a few drops of water makes for a nice pattern.

[Hizsigns]

Newby here and looking for solutions for clean edges for Signs with Raised Lettering and borders as well as VCarves... What masking works? everything I've tried so far leaves a rough edge on tape so useless trying to paint after cuts. Any recommendations? Tired of trying to freehand paint jobs..

[scottp55]

Stewart, ALMOST everything has been talked or done before. Sometimes the forums search engine is lacking though and a Google search prefaced by "Shopbot" give better results.
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=shopbot+masking

[ssflyer]

And if you want to search only the forum, use site:talkshopbot.com in Google as the preface, as in site:talkshopbot.com masking (https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#safe=off&q=site:talkshopbot.com+masking)

[joe]

Sure would like to see the finished sign. After all, there's been considerable efforts from SBers with suggestions.

I'm as guilty as anyone about showing my efforts on a project without a picture of the finished sign.

[RossMosh]

Sadly I haven't gotten past step 1. I'm about 3-4 people removed from the actual decision makers and either it's not being made clear what decisions they need made or they just want to ignore me.

Either way, paint requires time to dry, the machine requires time to machine, and I require time to make all of it work.

[joe]

Ross,

You must have the patience of Joab.

As a Sign Business owner that kind of delay shows a lack of respect. Either they don't need the product or aren't concerned about the time you have spent on the fine artwork.

Each person in this trade deserves some respect.