HDU Paint

[pro70z28]

I've done a couple small HDU signs for a new business in town. White background red/black lettering. I've painted the background with an exterior rattle can paint & lettered with one shot. These were in relatively protected areas that see little sun. Now I have to do 3 larger signs that will be on a southern exposure brick wall & an east west exposure monument sign (also brick).
What's the best paint to use to hold up to the weather? Something that won't chalk & leave a white streak down the brick. I thought about an automotive base coat/clear coat but that's a little spendy. Would a good quality Latex work? My guess is an alkyd enamel would chalk after a while? I'm open to suggestions. I'll be doing this job as soon as I get layout approval.

Sorry if this has been discussed before,
Thanks for your suggestions.

[joewino]

Yes, it's been discussed here before, but here's what we use.

The best we've found is Porter 100% acrylic.
They are water based, cover well and last longer than anything we've found. And they don't chalk.

You'll get various answers from other folks, but that is what works best for us here in Texas.

[jamesgilliam]

I will second Raymond's choice of Porter paint. I have used it on all my HDU signs and never had a failure.

[pro70z28]

Thanks for the replies. I did a search and found a store in Joliet that carries it. 1/2 hour trip. I'll give it a try.

[zeykr]

Raymond,
I don't have a Porter paint dealer real nearby, but deal with the guys at Pittsburgh Paints for Sikkens finish. They tell me that porter and pittsburgh are both owned by PPG and that porter recently changed over to using the same formulas as pittsburgh and they just market the same paints under different names. Do you know if/agree that porter has changed formulation/tints in last year or so and if they are in fact the same paints?

[joewino]

Yes, Porter is now a part of Pittsburg. I know that some of the formulas in Porter are no longer available, so they must have been changed to Pittsburg color formulas.

I haven't noticed a difference in the quality of the Porter paints. My Porter distributor says that Porter is the better line of paints over Pittsburge (he sells both) but now I guess they will all be the same.

[dakers]

Raymond,
We have only used Matthews two component polyurethane for signfoam. We can use the rubber mask, rout through it, paint the letters or back ground , peel the mask and we are done. everything works perfect and we can produce the sign very fast from start to finish.
I would love to use the porter or an acrylic water base paint. How does the mask stick to the porter. What type of mask do you use and how aggressive of an adhesive is on it.

[rb99]

What is the "rubber mask"?

RB

[dakers]

Richard,
sorry about that, i was thinking of how we sometimes rout through the rubber sandblast mask then we sandblast with grain frame or just texture the background leaving the letters raised.
when we rout the letters we use a trans mask then paint the letters then take the mask off.
it all works perfect with the matthews but that is expensive paint compared to water base acrylic

[pro70z28]

The place I found in Joliet is a Pittsburgh store.
I guess that makes sense now.

[joewino]

We don't use any mask now that all of our work is done on the ShopBot - no more sandblasting.

I never used the method you described when we were sandblasting because of the problem of the mask pulling up the paint...plus I just didn't like the look of the sharp edges where one paint film met the other.

The Matthews system is great, but we are not set up to do that type spraying. It produces excellent results, though.