Duracoating?

[Agent Akin]

What do folks think about duracoating? I'm toying with the notion of doing it to one of my weapons... it sounds pretty nice, but does anyone have first hand experience with it?

Related question... holy crap, how can you decide what colors to use? Honestly, I'm leaning towards flat black... if I pick one camo pattern, I'll probably immediately change my mind and want another. Then another... then another... bah...

[Roccobro]

Sir, we need to have a long talk....

Justin

[Holescreek]

The hardest thing about picking duracoat colors is that they don't match the color chips unless you choose black.

There is an active thread on another forum where someone is asking about user experience. Here was my response last night:

Clean everything. I usually glass bead all the parts first then give them a wipe down with laquer thinner. Only handle with gloved hands.

Duracoat will dry to the touch in 20 minutes, but the skin on the paint can be disturbed if it's thick. Once painted, I use coat hangers and hooks to move the parts to hang on a rack for drying. I paint each part individually with the base coat and let them dry over night.

Once dried I assemble everything I am going to pattern then start layering. You can get away with applying several different colors as long as you have the air through the airbrush adjusted so the paint isn't too thick. The colors will muddy up otherwise. If you can afford the time, wait a day between coats.

My "paint booth" is a very large cardboard box sitting on top of a bench. There is no top on the box and I have a 13" louvered vent fan in the wall pulling the paint mist away from me and sending it out the back wall of the shop. If I am painting large parts I sometimes have a 20" box fan behind me blowing towards the booth.

Duracoat cleans up very well with plain old laquer thinner. You don't need to buy the special cleaners with "duracoat" on the label. Clean your equipment as soon as you finish the last gun part before the paint can set up. It's a PITA to remove once hardened."

[heycorey]

Duracoat is great for color-matching components on a franken-gun and it'll hold up pretty well. If you've got a specific camo-pattern you want to use, duracoat's good for that as well. But if you just want to just lay down a basic camo-job, stick with Krylon. They have a good selection of camo-colors and if/when you change your mind, it'll come off pretty easily.

In either case, if you're wanting to lay down a camo-pattern, practice your technique on some cardboard first ... especially if you use duracoat.