Technical Lacquer Paint Questionnaire

I can, but I am not to the point of mixing a color for someone in lacquer until I do testing, and get feedback from others first.

 

Let me verify the acetone first. Its in the same family as mek, should work, but I will let you know tomorrow, with a list of solvents that will work in nitro.

 

in / during some hi humidity i have had it rose on me..
spots would be rose blush while the rest was ALL GOOD.

sometimes you could watch it fade AWAY and it would be ok...

 

Thanks for the good words. That just serves to illustrate my point that lacquer is a viable choice for D-I-Y painters. If you can sift through all the input in this thread and come up with a quality user-friendly product I think you'll have a waiting customer base.
As far as nitrocellulose vs. acrylic: I've never used nitrocellulose lacquer so as I said before acrylic would probably be my choice.
Keep us posted on your progress.

 

Geez, George, you been copying my homework again..???

Sounds suspiciously like my project - same car, same color. Hmmmm.....

 

Neat! Again, thanks for the info.

 

I bet you've been copying mine, I've had that car since the mid nineties. Mines a wagon with a blue interior, '66 date code 327 (not original to the car, it was a 6, 3 on the tree) 200r4 on the column, factory hubcaps and 4.11s. Whats yours? Send me a pm if you want, so we don't hijack this thread.

 

I painted my first car in the back yard 1964 was 15, it was a 55 BelAir H.T. (needless to say, wish I had it back). I shot the firewall, trunk and door jams with Burgundy Mist Poly, Ditzler lacquer with a "bug sprayer" the hand one and had to thin nearly 200% to get it to atomize, Borrowed a 1 1/2 hp compressor and had a brand new $15 Craftsman Siphon/Pressure spray gun to do the outside of the car after it was taped up. Honestly back then 400 grit was about all that was available and lacquer primer doesn't fill well and shrinks (so does Green Stuff, Nitro Stan and acrilic Blue). I was nearly 16 and my dad was a Chevrolet Dealership line mechanic, I learned so much from him and the guys he worked with. If your from the Bay Area, it was Dailey's Chevrolet in San Leandro and Hutch was the body shop manager and one of the best painters I ever saw in action. While in H.S. ended up painting a 56 Nomad and 63 Falcon Sprint that I had bought and built. Ended up in service and when stateside spent a lot of time in the auto hobby shop, supplementing the $98.00/month Uncle Sam thought I was worth. Ditzler was always my choice for Lacquer, and Centari by Dupont for Acrilic enamel with hardener. (I would usually shoot it with DTL 10 lacquer thinner and a few drops of "smoothee") Guns went from the old Craftsman , through Bink's model 7's to MBC and JGA devilbus. It was fun while I was doing it all, but it was a pain to color sand and polish a complete car, so I learned how to add enough reducer to make it flow. Through the 80s, I would topcoat any artwork with either R&M or Ditzler Clear and used not only a slow thinner but sometimes up to 80% reducer, then turn out the lights in the booth and go home. When you came back in the next day the Lacquer was still soft but not sticky so you could pull the tape and stick it in the corner for a week or two to dry. Sorry for the rambling, got out of the shops in 95 and went to work for the dark side (insurance company in 96 it was easier on the back and knees)
Bottom line I don't know enough or care about the HVLP guns (too me it just doesn't sound right) but I get such a nice pattern with an old siphon MBC with a large needle and cap, hooked to my 2 quart Pressure Pot, I feel I get at least the same transfer If I remember right 99A was Ditzler Black Lacquer and it was $9 a gallon in 72' same as clear and 311 white.

 

I think I know the car in your Avatar, your son used to have a red convertible Camaro?

 

With every one citing "Blush", painting in Hayward on wet days I would add a few cap fulls of lacquer reducer to the mix and slow it down enough so the moisture that is blushing would flash off. It slowed down the dry time so you had to make sure that no one touched it but when it was due out tomorrow you just had to make it work

 

Dupont developed Lacquer paint for cars and was a major partner of GM (and Indian Motorcycle) which is why GM cars were painted in Lacquer as opposed to Ford, which used Enamel.

 

Cary, had a Camaro way back in the early 80's but he's 47 now with wife, kids and a Cherokee, and mentally just Old. If I can ever help just ask, I'm out on Claribel past Waterford Hyw

 

Different car/person then...but still a small world

 

I agree with you 131-S was the best sanding primer I ever used and in garages it was perfect and if your like me you had a primer gun hanging on the bench somewhere, filled with it and just barely thinned 1:1 so it would almost spiderweb. When it got empty you just added more to it and used a toothpick to poke the siphon hole open, put a thumb over the hole and shake it up a few times, then point it away from the project and put a finger over the nozzle and pull the trigger and blow air back into the cup to break up the lumps and lay another heavy coat on.

 

understood

 

When "DuPont" was told to do away 181s & 131s , it created a buying frenzy. Being a distributor , I rat holed 5 gallons of 181s & depleted the last of it three years ago. Can's were 20-22 years old but went on like a dream. Very user friendly & sanded easy as always. There's some good filler primers out there now , but most seem to build up in very few swipes so thick a paint chip can look like the Grand Canyon. I know that's how some rides look straighter than ever dreamed possible but long live a thin "mil" lacquer job. Flux

 

Totally agree with above quote. Ideally would like to have a reasonably priced paint with low VOC (whatever that is) that I can use to duplicate the original lacquer on my '55s. Had BC/CC put on my '57. Happy with the durability but it is not the same. Thanks for looking into this.

 

No problem, I should have 1st bit of samples built by the first of February, we are getting all the air quality compliance crap sent for California. Didn't realize every single county and some city limits has its own restrictions. So once we get that and see what voc we can be at for every area then we will start with testing. We might build 2 different binders a 5.0 acrylic lacquer binder and a voc compliant lacquer binder. We will see how it all performs and difference in cost etc.

 

A few years ago, Lacquer paint was frowned upon, here at the H.A.M.Burger stand. When someone had a question about Lacquer, there was nothing but Negative replies. "Lacquer is crap", "I wouldn't touch Lacquer with a 10 foot pole", "Use it and you will be sorry you did". And now I read this thread and I wonder what gives?! No rants, only praises.

 

theres a lot of acrylic lacquer primers on e bay
some of it is close to Kondar( spelling?) wich was a ditzler product that we loved
O rielys has master prime for about 60 bux a gallon wich it o k, I can leave it in the gun for months
stir and add lacqer thinner
allmost like the old days
really good for small parts

 

Every paint company still makes lacquer primer. Most shops that I sell lacquer primer to prefer Evercoat Durabuild. Its extremely overpriced but I guess if it performs well.... I would really recommend a 2k primer below the lacquer topcoat, you will get longer life out of the topcoat that way.

 

I geuss to me the whole point of this is to not have to buy any overpriced shit
B

 

What do you consider overpriced?

 

McD's, Socal Gas, Beef, Eggs, Starbuck's, Subscription T.V., Magazines, Auto Parts, Bacon, Bacon, Bacon, Beer, Bacon, Beer, did I miss anything??

 

I hate to hear that 131s is no longer available. Paint Guru, will you be developing , or is there a comparable primer on the mkt? I have used other paint line primers, but not with the success of that one DuPont line. The black lacquer primer you see on my avatar is not worth spraying.

 

I doubt we would do a lacquer primer, because there are so many on the market and primer like that is difficult to make from a packaging standpoint. We make 1k primers but they are non sanding and its bulk purchasing for industrial use. Also Our resin supplier only offers a couple different type so to outsource a lacquer for this purpose would put us at a huge price disadvantage.

However we will look at anything, if someone has a old can laying around for us to have a wet sample for testing, we can see the make up of it. I will say this though, I have a 2k 75% solids urethane primer for under $90/kit so if you are paying over$22.50 a gallon for lacquer primer, it cost more per dry film build than my $90 primer. But I understand the ease of use with lacquer primer, just wanted to point that out.

 

Kondar was another love/hate relationship. Don't know how it came to market with the piss poor performance it had (has?). Any custom finisher worth his pruned up fingers knows that wet sanding primer nets the best finish. Wet sand Kondar and you'll see little blisters develop in the surface, those blisters being rust. No longer will any lacquer primer create a barrier to the bare steel. Other than that the best solution is a good 2K primer over bare steel. It sheds water and doesn't have the same porosity that lacquer (talc) primers have. It's not 100% water-PROOF without using a conversion coating or "etch" primer 1st, but before sanding it can shed water for a long time. If it's like 2 weeks old or less then water can be used to sand with no worries, or if the bare steel and body work is sealed with epoxy before surfacer is applied then wet sanding is not an issue.

 

I agree you can't build a good sanding lacquer that's going to have corrosion resistance, rust protection, non porous etc. 8 dry mils with our epoxy, its moisture resistant for 10 years plus just with 1 product, regardless of exterior exposure. Its used in the marine industry as well. One thing I have seen with the small rust blisters is due to poor quality compressed air filtration. Basically water trap being too close to compressor and there is too much water in the airlines. This creates rust even after the coating is cured. That's why most of our products have moisture scavengers in it, the moisture helps cure the coating, this helps pull moisture away from the substrate, not saying this is what happened to your kondar, but I have seen this at high end shops because a lot of shops dont have water separator where they prime. And I know most automotive paints do not use this technology in their coating, but you are right, you use a 1k porous coating, then wet sand, there is a high possibility of rust developing underneath! Excellent point.

 

Compatible solvents for Lacquer: Butyl Acetate, Anhydrous Ethyl Alcohol, Toluene and Methyl Ethyl Keytone (mek) should all work fine. Send me the msds of the reducer available to you up there and I will look it over.

 

It's taken a few days for me to plow through this whole thread since I first spotted it. All I have to offer is a thanks to Paint Guru for starting it and investigating the production, so those of us that wish to use lacquer have another option added to the limited options out there.