Ok we'd better get Wayne's log back on topic.... Ahem. Like the colour, when are you gonna get it done ?
Thanks Overminde, still some work to do better though. Thanks biojellywobbles, I was over the moon with how good the test pieces turned out. Ramble coming up. Thanks Phame, what Asouter & crapman said pretty much, there was a lot of it happening last year on loads of good projects, was driving me quite mad & I almost left here but it made me realise I need to stop giving so much of a poop especially about such a trivial thing. Wish I could say ta daaa but applying lacquer to panels with plenty of cutouts is quite a learning curve, wrong colour too. Update coming after these replies & yeah I was excited too after seeing the test pieces.
Sorry about not updating yesterday, happy face turned to sad face with the result on the actual project due to lacquer application so I climbed in bed to sleep it off to let me wake up with fresher mind to let me tackle it right, the timing test left me feeling quite excited & happy lol, enough to post a picture of the result with it being pretty nice so figured I'd be able to post some good results later in the day. But ouch, I was wrong & made a horror show instead, should probably censor these gruesome pictures lol, I've seen them up close in person & on full zoom in the pictures, nasty compared to the test pieces. If lacquer application was good it would have looked as nice as this. Not this time. Not to worry though, the stainless steel countersunk & button head screws turned out mostly awesome, typical. Was meant to be like this but I done the colour saturation level 100% instead of 30% & it's got a smidge too much red so was quite badly miscalculated, shorter dips are horribly orange instead of a nice light brown/beige. This is how I got the colour wrong, it's the right colour but the wrong saturation level. Colour wheel helps show the other colour to mix to the main colour, guess the diference, I'd say a tiny pinch of red to orange making hot orange. For 9 litres water 30 grams seems good but only 1/3 of that should have been hot orange & the 2/3 black. So I have to strip all the lacquer off every single piece of the project so I can reapply it better, I'll try brush again but without the tiptoeing around detail cuts & instead carefully clean up any excess mess with the makeup brush after a good single straight 1 direction soaked brush stroke covering the full piece fairly quickly. If that fails there will be a way to do it perfect & I'll find it, has to be perfect or very close to it if I'm to use this method on any future projects. I also had to use the big pan with not having a perfect sized pan for this, it needs 9 litres to fill it to 50ml deep, I had 3 restarts on the timing tests adding 9 grams of mixed dye with each test ending up with 27 grams so managed to figure out how to make correct colour saturations & brightness in any mass of water, I got solid figures I can work with now to tweak for smaller or larger amounts. I designed some water mass filler weights held together with screws, bit of square bar, 1mm aluminium, filled with gravel & sealed with high temp silicone, will reduce needed mass which would reduce needed dye also. Want to make a multi level dunking jig for placing parts well & removing them easy with a handle which could also be used to lift up/down to keep the mix lively. I'll cover everything properly once I complete this process successfully, until then I'd just be rambling & thinking out loud so more as soon as I make good progress, firstly I need to strip all the lacquer off everything so I can restart & need to find the best solution for stripping it off easy so it could be a while again or less if I get lucky, didn't bother dying the other pieces because I expected same kinda fail rate. Awesomeness doesn't come easy but when it does & I totally know what I'm talking about I'll post an understandable guide (hopefully) lol, really have no idea if this will be a popular finishing choice but anyone who was wanting to do anodising but didn't fancy the hazardous chemicals I think this will really appeal to them, I'd have loved to have found a guide on what I'm doing lol.
Urghhh, That's a damn shame Wayne, I was expecting a glorious spread of photos. I'm gutted for you. The best laid plans of mice and men...ect It's good to see you post pics of what actually happened (I wouldn't have) but good to see you working on a solution So I guess it's back to your fave' past time SANDING ...ouchhh !!!
It's a setback but I'll get it done right, had to post how nasty they turned out, all part of the log when I posted that preview yesterday I had these parts in the dye being done, was a bit crushed as soon as I pulled the first piece out but said I'd post later, didn't just get other people excited about that test, I was too. I'm going to look for something that will take the lacquer off easier than sanding limbo, I did consider mounting some plate alu on the disc sander to prevent pieces from zipping through the gap & just grinding the lacquer off but it would trash the surface finish to badly I think, some kind of chemical solution should make it come off easily (hopefully).
Yeah, a shame to see it didn't come out as good as the test pieces. I'm sure the next batch will be perfect.
Gutted for you mate. You could try nitromors to remove the lacquer, it should lift it right off the metal so you can get it off without too much abrasion.
Don't know how l missed this. Such lovely cuts and symmetry for being hand cut on the scroll saw. Ingenious finish using dye in the lacquer, hope you can work out the niggles.
Nothing major, apparently it's quite easy to remove after some googling. Was a real ohhhh sheeeeet moment though thinking I'd have to sand it all. All adds to taking better care to do things right. Will make me feel good when I do it right. There are some products that can do it easier that can be bought, usually toxic though, I would use a toxic product if it was the only way though. Thanks Boorach, semi fluke due to being too cheap to get parts pro anodised which led me to using copper & wanting to prevent tarnishing which led me to the metal lacquer but I've been wanting to find an alternative to colour anodising for a couple years now & just decided to play about with the idea again, the lacquer somehow made faint sense it might take dye, was blown away when I found it did, the fact the lacquer is hard wearing too makes it even better, glad it takes a while to absorb the dye too, gives good control over the shades. There are strippers available at shops that are meant to be easier solutions but this home solution I came across doesn't sound a tiny bit difficult. 1 Tablespoon of Baking Soda to each Quart of Water, boil, throw parts in, 15 minutes later it should peel off, any stubborn leftovers clean off with the type of stuff I do for stickers, white spirit. Sounds great I'll try it now & if it seems like a bit more of a challenge I'll save it for in the morning so I can get back to ready for dying again within a couple days. Be funny & awesome if I got it all off before I go bed.
The boiling water with baking soda did a pretty nice job of turning the lacquer to easily removable mush that could be wiped off but it would have been better to have double the potency of baking soda but would still need a few dunking runs, I only did the 1. You can see on the screws how it stripped a fair bit of colour out & reduced some lacquer, the screws cleaned up easy with satinising pad. Still had a lot to remove, I tried satinising pad at first but wasn't getting far enough for the amount of elbow polish I was putting in so resorted to using the metal scrubber shown in this picture. How they looked after the baking soda & some scrubbing. So ended up switching to 220 grit submerged wet sanding which helped it go a lot faster, after that I used satinising pad to pretty much get back to pre lacquered state. Still a bunch of panels to do but I am onto it all, all this will be excellent supplementary info for the guide I make too.
Great result, I was wondering how it would all come off, liking the trial and error approach, it kinda appeals to the mad scientist way of thinking
Thanks Asouter really glad it happened on a small project like this rather than LAG, that would have been a nightmare.
Thanks mate, still needs more dunks though. It does do the trick of turning it to easy to remove mush but it needs a good few dunks I think to fully remove it all. Just got back from the supermarket but I can't believe I forgot to grab a few packs of baking soda, really gutted, really want to get this project done & get back onto LAG because all that tech ain't getting any younger lol. Took a closer look at the plain lacquered pieces also & only fragments of it came off so it's either a hefty sanding session on all of the parts or get a load of baking soda so I can do higher concentration mix & a few more dunks so it just easily wipes off, turns it to mush but only removes tiny bit by bit but far easier than sanding. Would have had it all boiling in a high concentrated mix right now if I remembered.
