I put a 5th coat of bondo last night and sanded it smooth this morning... I think this is the last coat bc you can hardly feel the differance any more. I sanded the other 3 pieces and then masked and painted all of them. Again though I am spending the weekend at Penn State so that will give the paint the required 2 days to dry before I sand and put on another coat. I took a few pics and I will post them as soon as I can find someone with a SD card reader or an iR port so I can get the photos outta my camera.
So I am back home and the paint has dried for 2 days... Time to sand and paint the next coat... Here is how it looks so far. Not bad so far. We will see what happens with some sanding and a few more coats of paint. -B
Wow... Painting and sanding take a lot longer than I though.... Since my last set of pictures I have done 2 more coats of paint, the last coat looked pretty good and I dident cut through it with the 600grit. I found that if I put a thin piece of foam under my sanding block between it and the paper the paper better contured to the slight curve of the lid which made sanding it easier as it would not strip the high parts before it could sand the low parts. In its current state the lid has almost no visiable marks and is sanding down each time to a very smooth dull finish which is what I want at this stage. I am going to let it set this weekend and sunday we will see how well the sanding goes. I should only need one more coat of blue before I can go over to the black. All the remaining parts have been sanded and painted again also. I sanded away almost all the first coat of paint due to their being texture in the finish still. currently they are looking much better and should only need another coat of paint, 2 tops. once I am finished with all of these pieces next week I will be able to do the second colors on the palm rest and lid. and get the latch and power button painted at some point too. I'll post some pics of the current condition soon. -B
Finally I have a decent picture to put up here. all that sanding and painting takes forever and the progress between each step is important yet not really worth taking pictures of... so here is what the 4 pieces currently look like. so far the palm rest, hinge, and front frame of the lcd are DONE!, well almost, they all need a few coats of super ultra high gloss etc etc but the final color coat is down on all of them also the lid is now completly smooth and looks sweet, it needs some light sanding, masking in the pirate design, then 1-2 coats of black before I can clear coat and finish it. thats it for now, time to let everything cure over the weekend. -B
Finally I have some new pictures!! The last week was spent pretty much hoping that I could get some ink for my printer so that I could print out my pirate template onto the special sticker paper. After I got it printed I cut it out with an exacto knife and spent a good hour aranging the pieces so that they were somewhat even. After I made sure they were stuck down good I painted over the whole lid with black. Let it set over the weekend, then painted a second coat of black last night. This morning it appears to have dried quite well so I peeled off the sticker, reveling the blue underneeth. unfortunitaly I forgot to take a picture of the sticker on the lid. anyway here is what it looks like now. by tomorrow it should be fairly well cured and all the pieces will get some lite sanding before the first of most likely 2 coats of gloss go on. By this weekend the project should be finished!!!
As you can see from the last set of pictures the colors came out nice but they are dull and matte looking. I applyed a clear super gloss coat to all of the pieces and it came out really crappy. It looked dull and had spots and dust etc all over it and I thought it runed my paint job completly. I let it dry for 2 days then I sanded it with 1000 grit paper untill I could see a orange peal like texture, glossy pits and dull matte higher points. Then I painted a second gloss coat which appears to have come out much better. This coat is semi-reflective but lacks a true mirror finish smooth look I want. From what I know about painting, which is really a lot of trial and error, I should sand this second gloss coat lightly with 1000, 1500, and 2000 grit paper to give it a nice even dull finish. then go back over it with a rubbing compound to remove the fine scratches. If I sand it and it looks dull and uneven I will have to put on a third gloss coat, which I am hoping is not the case. But I have to wait untill tomorrow before I can start sanding it, which is sad because I had hoped to have it finished today so that I could use it tomorrow
Good work. But you really need to clean up that LCD-screen. Avoid regular soap, as it may damage the screen further. Use luke warm water and soft cloth, maybe together with a little bit of soap that is suitable for the thin plastic that covers the LCD-screen.
I finished sanded with 1000 then 2000 today. I was unsure if this would actuially work but suprise suprise it did! After all that sanding and painting I spent a few hours buffing out the scratches by hand with some 3m scratch remover. It is super smooth right now and water just rolls off the paint. Tomorrow I will get something.. idk what. to polish it to a super glossy shine and put it all together and take some final shots. Here is a tiny shot of what it looks like right now in the mean time.
Yeah I know I need to. I am going to get some windex or something on that before it goes back together so I can make sure to get the edges good. I also was able to locate a screw that had been rattling around in my laptop since I bought it on e bay 2 years ago. So that's a good thing. I got some Nu finish or something like that in the orange bottle that is a polish that is safe for clear coats and has no wax so I am hoping it will finish off things nicely. I will be applying that later tonight and hopefully putting everything back together as well. Tomorrow morning I will take some final pics outside with some good lighting.
Finished!! Finally after a month of work my laptop is complete! I took lots of photos outside to capture the super glossy effect better. I used some Nu Finish in the orange bottle to make it super shiny at the end. It took some time to put everything back together and I have a few extra screws but it works great and looks awesome. so lets start off the pictures with a little close up of the finish on the lid. lid closed Latch detial Open, palm rest reflects the screen, when partially closed the screen text can be read in the reflection Right side Left side Back side shot is that a tree in my palm rest? I like the blue power button top shot super glossy I would like to thank everyone who commented and helped me out with this project. I would like to also thank Linear1 for his painting tutorial on his site. I basically took what I knew from my last painting exp and tried a few new things but the finish could not have been done with out his guide. I think all this painting has made my shuttle pc jelious... Since it seems my painting is improving I might have to keep going and paint all my pc's lol
Aaah! That's more than nice! I love those "before" and "after" shots! I wish all modders would conclude their worklogs that way! PS. I see you got your screen cleaned too!
Wow, really nice! I think I'll have to copy your method (about from putting a skull onto the back) because my laptop lid has a deep scratch in it and lots of cosmetic damage! (In fact I have thought about doing this since last october when the unfornunate cosmetic damage incidene happened in Canada). What spray did you use?
I think you should clearcoat the keyboard, and paint the bottom of the thing. Except that, Looking great!
