Painting Gear

[NWSurveyor]

Water bottles marked "PEE BOTTLE" work the same .... I mark the real pee bottle "DO NOT DRINK". This way you can find out who your friends are... do they warn you of what you are about to do or sit back and watch your reaction. Can be funny with new caving buds who watch as "friends" say nothing about an impending disaster, even 'Shuuushing" the unsuspecting newcomer. Needless to say nobody messes with my stuff, however someday I may get senile and the the joke will be on me.....here's hoping that is a long ways off...

[self-deleted_user]

Thanks for the testing idea Jon! I will do that. I really want to decorate gear, and it seems silly that there is *nothing* that can do it and stay well bonded and not flake off. I am in chemistry after all...maybe I could just design my own in spare time in the lab lol. Anyway, I would personally feel fine painting gear with doing that test. If crumpling it all up doesn't make it flake, seems safe enough to me!

[Chads93GT]

IF you can find paint that doesnt flake off when crumpled, then be sure to let Ford, GM, Chrysler, etc know as they would pay a fortune for it ;) Granted flexing agents can be used, but it wont be that flexable. It will allow a polyeurethane bumper to not shatter when bumped into, but as far as making it so you can paint a football, then deflate the football and not have the paint come off........not going to happen.

[self-deleted_user]

Damn now I'm curious...there must be some kind of polymer out there that would allow that...

Anyway, I got a silver sharpie. I can make metalic purple on darker gear by purple sharpie over silver.

[Chads93GT]

even steel permanently loses its shape when bent. as does any material.

[self-deleted_user]

Well did the sharpie idea. What I did for the dark drab ugly green Apex since no way would purple sharpie work over that, was to color it first with a Silver Metalic Sharpie which is meant for on dark objects, and then coloured over it with a purple sharpie. I liked the metalic look so I did the same on my helmet, silver first then purple over it. =)

My new way cool Apex:


My new way cool helmet (and colored the gray on the Corona back section a purple too!)

[Jon]

Years ago I knew a guy who raced SCCA (Sports Car Club of America). He had a Lotus and was creamed by a Vette. His Lotus was painted with the then new Emron paint. (Note this stuff is toxic as all get out when un cured...it is epoxy based) Anyway back at the shop he spray painted all kinds of nasty things about GM products and Vettes in particular on the wreck. Weeks later he calmed down and went to fixing his car. He used lacquer thinner on his spray painted temper tantrum with no ill effect to the paint. He was able to hammer much of the body damage out. Anything that didn't fold over almost 180 degrees didn't crack or peel off. Now that was 35 years ago and I hope we have progressed since then. The drawback is that way back then that stuff was like $60 a gallon and few shops were equipped to deal with the toxicity of the stuff in it's wet airborne state.

AS for the crumple test I was more concerned with peeling off than cracking.

By the way that multilayer purple Apex "sharpie" job looks great. Looks like an airbrush job....touch up will be a bear unless, as it looks like already you have, a very steady hand. I wouldn't have thought it would turn out so well...now if I can just find a Sharpie in day-glow green I might just do my 60 & 130 lumen Apex "lenders" in an un-un-mistakeable color.

Note: Emron is available in metallic colors now, but as is often seen on Peterbuilt trucks, it's flexible but for some strange reason it doesn't like joints such as pop rivets and will crack away from same, no matter how tight they are. But on a well prepped surface without seams, is all but indestructible. Is there something today in a spray can?

[self-deleted_user]

You mean like lime?


I guess actually I used Bic's permenant markers for the purples. Since I have the huge 36 colour set.