New Paint Scheme for Aeromarine Titan

[NITROSNIFER]

I agree with Roger when it comes to nice looking boats. I am not as good or do the wicked paint he does but I like them to look good. I take a lot of time including wet sanding the primer to get that glass finish. Sure it sucks when they get smacked up but that's racing.

 

[Roger Hooks Jr.]

Also wanted to modify the look and streamline the aerodynamics of the hull by switching out and fitting a cowling from an ebay special mono that hasn't worked out so far. Here you can see the original cowl and the new one.

The damage on the boat was a bit more than I expected so it too a few rounds of filling the the polyester filler to fill in all the nicks and scratches. around the edges to get them good and sharp. It took to rounds of priming (2 coats each) to get those out. In case you are worried about the extra weight of the primer, in the first coat I come pretty close to sanding all the flat so most of it is sanded of leaving on the primer that fills in the low spots. Then I prime again so I can sand (not all the way off) but to a smooth even surface. The idea in surface prep is to get it as perfect as possible. Extra work and patience at this face makes the color and clearing phases go much smoother and faster.

At this point I am about a day and half into the project.

 

[Roger Hooks Jr.]

Also wanted to modify the look and streamline the aerodynamics of the hull by switching out and fitting a cowling from an ebay special mono that hasn't worked out so far. Here you can see the original cowl and the new one.

The damage on the boat was a bit more than I expected so it too a few rounds of filling the the polyester filler to fill in all the nicks and scratches. around the edges to get them good and sharp. It took to rounds of priming (2 coats each) to get those out. In case you are worried about the extra weight of the primer, in the first coat I come pretty close to sanding all the flat so most of it is sanded of leaving on the primer that fills in the low spots. Then I prime again so I can sand (not all the way off) but to a smooth even surface. The idea in surface prep is to get it as perfect as possible. Extra work and patience at this face makes the color and clearing phases go much smoother and faster.

At this point I am about a day and half into the project.

Okay... Got interrupted a bit with a race weekend and it took longer than anticipated to fill and smooth some of he damage to the hull. So with that said at this point I am probably 16 hours into the prep on this boat. Here are a few shots of the edges of the boat that I showed before that were all beat up and tattered. You can see here how they are now back nice and sharp. It is said that you shouldn't paint that bottom and I agree if you are not a seasoned painter and/or don't plan on taking care of the wetted surfaces. With each coat I make sure that sand the surfaces flat with all edges as sharp as I can get them.

 

[Roger Hooks Jr.]

So here I am putting on the Candy Red coat over silver base. The problem is that I left some silver in the gun when I poored in the Candy thinking it would give me a nice metalic effect. Well there was toooooo much metallic silver in the cup and it changed the Candy Red to more of a metalic Champaign color. I thought about it and thought about it, thinking that I would leave it.. Afterall my girlfriend liked the color... She called it Mauve... I believe. Hmmm... but I decided Mauve wasn't a race boat color... Hahahaha so I sanded it down and recoated it again... this time with no silver in the candy paint. LOL!

 

[Roger Hooks Jr.]

So here I am putting on the Candy Red coat over silver base. The problem is that I left some silver in the gun when I poored in the Candy thinking it would give me a nice metalic effect. Well there was toooooo much metallic silver in the cup and it changed the Candy Red to more of a metalic Champaign color. I thought about it and thought about it, thinking that I would leave it.. Afterall my girlfriend liked the color... She called it Mauve... I believe. Hmmm... but I decided Mauve wasn't a race boat color... Hahahaha so I sanded it down and recoated it again... this time with no silver in the candy paint. LOL!

Oooops... forgot the attachment

 

[Roger Hooks Jr.]

Here is the boat after the candy red is applied. Here I am using a much less expensive paint system called Duplicolor. I am using the paint can that goes for $22 a quart versus House of Color's $80 a quart. I still prefer House of Color though the pigments just seem much more rich. But the Duplicolor is a healthy compromise that delivers good results.

Here you can see that I have begun to apply the decals however, I am not finished with the paint scheme. I wanted to place the decal at an angle that wrapped around the side and the deck of the hull plus I wanted to layout some graphics that fit tightly around that. To make sure I didn't get any unwanted overlap I put the decal on first then began to mask around it using Blue 1/8th inch Vinyl masking tape made by 3M. I like it because it gives good adhesion even around curves as you can see here and that good adhesion prevents the paint from bleeding under. It also leaves a nice crisp line that regular masking tape may not. You can pick up vinyl masking tape at an auto parts store, automotive paint store, and many hardware stores. If all else fails you can bum some off of your local auto body shop. I am sure they will have roles of it or you can shop online. You can buy it here. http://www.tcpglobal.com/3m/3m400-3.aspx#471 along with supplies for all of your paint and finishing needs.

 

[Roger Hooks Jr.]

Here is the boat with the masking completed. You can see the outline of the 3M Blue tape and the tape I covered the rest with which was 3/4 inch Yellow 3M tape. Not sure if the colors mean anything as far as the larger tape goes. I have seen Yellow, Blue, Green, Red and Orange. At this point I have lost about 4 to 6 hours due to the time it took for me to correct the color which brings me to about 24 hours into this project. (2 Full Weekends of 8 hour days)

 

[Roger Hooks Jr.]

So here are the two cowls that were painted red then sanded again. As I mentioned I was sure on on far wanted the red flames to fill into the white area so I just painted the whole boat red with the intention of painting white of the areas I decided not to mask out later. Another way to attack this problem is to sketh your scheme out before hand. Since most of the detail of my schemes come on the fly I use methods that give me the most flexibility.

You can see from this photos that I not using any red as you see only the decals masked off which were part of the main hull design. So here I painted in the windshield areas to masked off next. You can see here I use a "Mask-Out" method versus a "Mask-In" method. "Mask-Out" allows you to simply cover the areas you don't want painted. So here I painted the areas Black that I wanted to cover the area of the windshield then I masked out the area and covered it with tape. I used the blue 3M vinyl masking tape to outline the edges of the windshield allowing me to define the shape just as I wanted it. Then I filled it in the the Yellow masking tape. As I mentioned before, Yellow, Blue, Green, Beige all of these colors work fine for general masking but for good crisp lines I stick to masking the edge with blue.

Note: a "Mask-In" method is when you mask around the area you want to paint then paint in the area you left exposed. I prefer the Mask-Out versus the Mask-in because you can paint and mask as you go. This works really well when you using fast drying paints. You could for example paint a boat white for a base. Then mask out some racing stripes (masking only the area that will be the stripe so those will be white) then paint the rest of the boat blue for example. Pull the tape off the white areas and then clear cloat and your finished. Versus painting the boat Blue first then masking the whole boat out just so you can paint a couple of racing stripes. You save time (and materials) by masking the small area versus masking the large area. I would suggest this on scales like painting the silver trim around the sides. Paint the silver trim around the edges first then run your 1/8th blue vinyl tape over it and leave it their until you finish the rest of the scheme. When you finish the rest of the scheme then pull off the trim and it's already there. You don't have to mask of the whole boat just to paint the detail. And you don't have to worry about over spray from trying to mask out pieces of the boat. : )

 

[Roger Hooks Jr.]

Here I am painting the exposed area of the hull that wasn't masked out. If you look back at the previous post I "Masked-Out" the Red area, even placing the decals already for this area I that did not intend to paint with more colors.

 

[Roger Hooks Jr.]

Ooops I forgot the picture again.

 

[Roger Hooks Jr.]

Here are the two cowlings with the windshield masked out. Now I am painting the white which will make up the most the cowl scheme.

 

[Roger Hooks Jr.]

So the paint has dried and I removed the mask. As I pointed out earlier I had already applied the decals on the side of the boat to allow me to accurately mask my tribal flame design around the decal as I wrapped it from the sides of the boat to the deck. The boat looks pretty good hear but I had a deck decal planned as well as well as a few sponsor and championship decals. I try to paint boats to resemble or at least look like they are in the spirit of full size race boats so I tend to use lots of decals to achieve this.

 

[Roger Hooks Jr.]

Here is the boat with the rest of the decals applied. Now all is left is the clear coat. The boat was inspired by the full size boat attached. I liked the clean sleek design of this boat. I had planned to copy the paint design exactly but the artist in me just took over and just had to do something a bit more wild. The scheme was designed to promote the AA Engines my dad will selling on the West Coast. The name of the boat business is Double-Ace Racing Products. A name chosen to show it's relation to selling the AA Engines. The boat will sport the AA 45.

 

[Roger Hooks Jr.]

So here's the clear coat on the cowls. You can see here I removed the mask on the windshield after I painted the white for a mostly white scheme with the decals placed on top.

 

[Roger Hooks Jr.]

So here is the boat after two coats of clear. Looks good for the most part but there are some problems.

Using this paint I just started to make part of my paint system I realize a characteristic I had not encountered using House of Kolor. Although I am aware that this type of problem exist I had not encountered it in a paint system until today. Remember I painted the white "OVER" the Red which was a Candy Red. Well the Red began to bleed up through the white so the white isn't a perfect bright white it is a bit of a peachy white color. Had I anticipated the problem I would have chose not to paint the entire boat white or shot an intercoat clear over the red to act as a barrier between the two colors. I could have also shot a coat of regular clear which would have solved the problem as well. My options are to sand and mask out the decals and red paint graphics to shot the white again but unfortunately in his case I just don't have the time. Since it's my own boat I will just live with it or come back to it at later on. Overall it looks pretty good to me. Just not quite perfect. I'd also opt to sand the boat with 400 grit and put another couple of coats so that I could polish to a glass smooth 100% gloss finish but need to start putting this boat together now for the race next weekend.

So a couple of lessons learned on this paint project.

1. If using Candy paints even though you're using silver as a base coat (actually any base color can be used, black, silver, gold however, silver and gold are best) don't leave silver in the paint cup thinking it's going to give you a metallic look. It will dilute your color and this case gave us a kind of mauve color.

2. Using Duplicolor Paint (found in pourable quarts or spray can), which is a Laquer paint, don't paint light colors over light colors without an intercoat clear barrier between them as the darker color may bleed up through the lighter color.

So that's it for this boat. I hope I shared something with you that you can take and use yourself.