Painting aluminum?

[Firebird21]

What's the name of the tape i'd need FB? Any idea?

Here's a link...

http://caswellplating.com/powder/powder_tape.html




As for your paint scheme, that's a difficult one... It's hard to mask and hard to sand off. Not that it's impossible, just difficult. The best thing to do is to powder coat the whole thing (less the threads) and put it on a lathe to basicaly carve the coating out the inner groves. Provided you have access to a lathe.


I suppose you could rough mask it, attach it to a drill and sand down the edges caused by the masking tape with some 100(dry) 220(wet) 400(wet) 800(wet) 1500(wet) then use some buffing compound to shine it all up.

[Lord Maul]

it is a glass tape.
i don't know the exact name, but it is heat-resistant because of the glass in it

[TimeRender]

Instead of painting you could try oxidizing it. I just finished a saber that I weathered with Aluma-black. Go check out the gallery and you'll see what I mean.

[Steeljack]

I wouldn't use a steel wire brush on aluminum. The brush will leave trace amounts of steel on the aluminum and over time it will react with the aluminum, then corrode and create pits and bumps in the hilt and paint.

Neat. I didn't know that. Thanks for the heads-up.

You may want to read this Topic...
The Basics of Painting

Wow. Nice write-up. Thanks for sharing!

Here's a pic of what I had Powder Coated. Even though most people here have already seen it... lol

Nice. I hadn't seen it. Is the copper part a powder-coat, too?

Also, thank for the link to the powder-coati masking material. That may come in dead useful one of these days.

[987654321a]

yea steeljack i knew that about how some can use enamels but mine cant and i would rather not use it anyways