What to use to paint metal black?

I don't know if this is home repair or not, but you are the best guys to ask, and I park my car right next to my home. My apologies if this is off topic.

If I "paint" metal with a black indelible marker, and it doesn't look good 6 months from now, will I still be able to paint it with real metal paint, like maybe I should do it now????? I'm feeling off-sorts, and it just seems so much easier to use a marker, and there's no chance of spilling the paint.

Details: The imitation louvers at the rear side of my car's hood are no longer all black. More than half of it is grey. I guess all the paint is gone. (AFAICR, it was all fine a year or 6 months ago, but I suppose that's unlikely.)

They are metal, and normally I would think to use metal paint, but in this case, it seems the easiest thing to do is use a black indelible marker, like a Sharpie. I've been using indelible markers for a lot of things in the last few years** but none as big as this. I have more than one brand of black marker. So I think I can match the color and I think the finish will match fine, or I'll just do the whole louver.

If it doesn't look good after a while, will I still be able to paint it?????

It's a 95 chrysler with hidden wipers so there is no need for real louvers. I expect to have the car another two years.

**I painted a brass and pot metal candelabra with a gold indelible marker and it still looks good years later. I only clean it under hot water, and the part I clean is real brass. The part I "painted" may never have gotten wet. (It was bought right after the war when brass items were hard to get. I had the pot metal part replated once already. I think maybe I only painted part that broke and I repaired with PC-7.)

My grey synthetic cloth case for my small camera got dirty, as I knew it would, going in and out of my pocket over and over on my vacation, and I "painted" the whole thing black with a marker. So far, it looks good.

A couple other things I don't remember now.

Reply to
mm
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Sounds to me that the primer is showing. Painting will prevent any rust. I doubt a Sharpie will do that and probably either wash off in time, or deteriorate quicker than paint.

Hank

Reply to
Hustlin' Hank

rather than use a marker, why not go to a hobby shop and get a paint pen? Same mode of application, but it dispenses paint, not indelible ink.

nate

Reply to
Nate Nagel

clipped

For all the typing you did to ask the question, you could just about have painted the louver :o)

I used indelible marker on my kitchen wall once, for a particularly important message to my husband....I had painted the kitchen myself with Ben Moore alkyd semi-gloss. Hubby was able to remove all traces of the marker and left no scratches :o) Not worth telling, but a testament to Ben Moore paint.

Clean the louver very well. Mask, spray with primer, let dry, spray with metal paint.

Reply to
norminn

Sharpies fade pretty quickly outside. In the time it took you to type your question you could have masked off the area and painted it with a spray can.

Reply to
George

Thanks for all the replies, especially the paint pen, Nate, but no one answered the one question I asked, above! :-)

Or this one, which is the same.

Probably true.

But that's not so. I do probably have the paint, but I have to find it among all the other paint. And the borders are curved. I have to find newspaper, tape, drive a block away where the overspray won't get on my meighbor's anything, mask it and spray it. I know myself. I'm not feeling great and I'm not going to do it unless the marker would make it harder to paint later, when it doesn't look good but hasn't come off entirely.

Editorial Once when I wanted to touch up the paint on my car, I went to a car wash first. Even though I didn't pay for wax and didn't have my headlights on, they waxed the car anyhow. I was upset because I thought it meant I couldn't paint that day. The guy insisted the wax was next to nothing, and though I thought that too, I still figured it would last for 2 hours until I finished painting. I painted and the Duplicolor paint was a perfect match to my Mariner Turquoise GM car.

30 seconds after I painted, I couldn't tell where I had painted. It looked perfect. AFAInoticed, the scratches and nicks stayed painted for a long time and the wax didn't mess me up at all.
Reply to
mm

Apparently you want to do this job twice because you seem to insist on using some half-assed way of doing it. Paint is the only way to do it correctly. Anything else like not wiping your ass after a shit because it takes too long.

I know it had to hurt when a woman told you what to do. OUCH! :-)

We don't care about your editorial either.

Hank

Reply to
Hustlin' Hank

Not familiar with the model in question, but if I was gonna bother to paint it, I'd probably take it off the car (if possible), paint it inside, and maybe bake it with a heatlamp or in the oven, if the part is small enough. After scuffing the old surface, and a thorough degreasing, of course. If I really wanted it to be pretty, I'd take it someplace and have it powder-coated. Or maybe stop by a junkyard, and see if I could find one in better shape for a few bucks. Detroit seems to have trouble with black trim- any I have ever had ended up looking like crap after a few years. Unless it actually started rusting, I didn't worry about it.

But to answer the question- nah, the marker won't stop you from repainting. The surface prep you do (scuffing and degreasing) will bare enough metal to give the paint a good bite, and the layer of ink is so thin as to be porous anyway.

-- aem sends...

Reply to
aemeijers

While Hank's delivery may have been a bit rough, he is correct that you seem set to take the marks-a-lot route on this, which as all have advised is probably not going to last. If you can't take the time to do it correct, go for the marker. In a year you will probably be doing it the right way and will probably not post to the list telling us we were right.

Have a good day.

Reply to
Mark

I really should look before I write this line, but.... I don't think it is meant to come off, or at least I'd have to find new connectors to put it back on.

I'm sure it looked okay two years ago, when the car was 13 years old. Perhaps a little grey showed, but not enough to bother me. But it makes sense that it might wear out almost everywhere at the same time, because the only wear on it is the weather and the wind. It seems to

No rust on the top. The whole surface, grey or black, is fairly rough, but it's not rust.

Thanks. That makes sense. Maybe that's why the wax didn't interfere with my scratch painting years ago.

Mark, thanks for writing. I did have my mind made up from the begining. I notice now that I did ask an open-ended question in the subject line -- maybe the bad result this time of a normally good habit -- and I apologize if that overly influenced anyone. But in the body of the post, the only question I asked was whether the the Sharpie would interfere with painting later. If it would, then I'd switch to painting now, which is why I wrote the subject line as I did.

Reply to
mm

Marks-a-lot will not look black. Ii will look purple.

Leaving it the way it is would look better, and offer just as much protection.

Reply to
salty

Sharpie ink can be removed with alcohol. End of discussion.

Charlie

Reply to
Charlie

The reason no one has answered your direct question is most likely that no one here has ever tried what you want to do. I certainly wouldn't.

I do happen to have a small sign outside written in indelible marker on plastic. I have to redo it every few months because it fades until you can't read it. (It looks bad within weeks, but in this case I don't care.)

Reply to
Larry The Snake Guy

What was the message (if it can be relayed on a family-oriented newsgroup)?

The mind reels.

Reply to
HeyBub

So remove the thing that needs paint and decamp to your living room where you can spray the item to your heart's content. No masking, no neighbor, no hunting for paint - except in the Rustoleum aisle at Home Depot.

Reply to
HeyBub

=BF=BDI have to

Can't you see that he had his mind made up from the beginning? He never planned on painting it in the first place. I don't know why he asked the question in the first place. Must be a troll that does shoddy work.

Hank

Reply to
Hustlin' Hank

That's great. Thanks.

Reply to
mm

It might happen to me too. Thanks for the warning. We'll see. (That also means I'll be able to paint it. )

Posting back to tell you all what happens, like someone suggested, is difficult in this group, because there are so many posters and so many posts, and who reads what is posted seems to depend on multiple fators, like time of day, etc.

I used to keep a map on my dashboard, and after 2 or 3 years, all the red streets disappeared entirely. The green streets and black streets seemed fine. Different ink of course.

Reply to
mm

They answered your question, it just wasn't the answer you wanted to hear. Their answer was basically: Why use a marker when it would only take a couple extra minutes to do it right, which you admit will have to be done later. In other words, they are telling you it is a stupid idea.

Hank

Reply to
Hustlin' Hank

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