PAINT EMERGENCY

[Silvan]

The dog ate my son's Pinewood Derby car. Literally.

The pressure is on. The Derby is SUNDAY, and I'm supposed to have the car checked in by tomorrow evening. Further complicating matters, I'm on the Pack Committee, and I have to be involved with setting the thing up most of the day. My effective deadline, therefore, is 3:30 PM tomorrow.

We didn't have time to futz around with hand painting, so I sprayed the car with some 88-cent black lacquer spray paint that's been around since Halloween. The can said 65-90 F temp range, and the shop was at 65 when I sprayed it.

After shaking, it still seemed somewhat thin, but the paint went on OK. It looks quite good. Almost a piano finish. That's wehre the good news ends.

It's been sitting around for about six hours now, and I can leave fingerprints in the paint. This stuff normally dries hard in only an hour, so I'm afraid maybe the paint in the can was too cold, too old, not well mixed and too much solvent, or the 65 degrees was too low, or something.

We still need to add weight, fit the wheels, and hopefully paint some gold trim on this thing. None of that can happen until the paint dries hard enough to withstand some pretty heavy handling.

I can push the deadline to Sunday noonish, but that's all the time I have.

Is there anything I can do to get this paint to cure? Maybe bake it in a low oven or something?

Am I just completely screwed?

Plan B is to re-use last year's car. That's about all I can think of if I can't salvage this one. I hate like hell that I let his car get eaten, and I sure hope I don't have to tell him that this paint is never going to cure properly.

TIA.

[Groggy]

Put it in the oven on low, perhaps leave the door ajar slightly to avoid overheating. It wouldn't be the first car to race 'wet' anyway.

good luck

[Eric Ryder]

If your dog ate *that* car (ya know - the ...unique one you fashioned with the lathe...) I'd be a bit careful running about the house with no drawers on.

There shouldn't be anything in a can of lacquer that would keep it from curing. Hope it's set by now.

[jegan]

If your rules are anything like ours are then a wet car is not allowed to run in the race. I'm not too sure about the oven thing. I wouldn't have it on too high. How high is too high? Beats me, I've never had to bake on a finish to any our cars but I wouldn't exceed

125. Maybe the microwave would dry it faster? Sorry, just kidding. At the very least I would put it in front of a fan.

If there is any chance that the paint could be just a bit sticky where the wheels touch the car then take some Elmers glue and spread it a semi-circle a bit less than the diameter of a dime around the axle slot. Before the glue can dry spread some graphite on it and press it into the glue. That will give the wheel a slick surface to ride against instead of the paint.

We sprayed our cars in my garage which couldn't have been more than 60 degrees. They dried overnight just fine.

Good luck Jim (Pack 783 Pinewood Derby Committe member)

[Silvan]

Do> There shouldn't be anything in a can of lacquer that would keep it from

Nope, not by a long shot. I had to strip it. Mineral spirits worked. I didn't expect it to, and I was really surprised that it did. I suspect that's an indication that the paint was severely borked.

Well, at least I got that crap off of it. It doesn't look remotely as good as it did after the lacquer, but ye olde trusty SWMBO's Apple Barrel paint at least dried to a consistency that allows handling in very short order.

Did I ever mention that I really hate paint? Painting wood should be illegal.

[John Crea]

Means the oven was TOO HOT. You can cobble together a box with a light bulb for a heat source that would not have this problem (have used cardboard boxes and a 40watt bulb in a pinch

John

[Mike Patterson]

My wife paints furniture pretty often, I frequently set up a space heater on "Low" so it's blowing on a painted piece and let it run for a few hours.

So far, so good.

Mike Patterson Please remove the spamtrap to email me.

[Groggy]

Sorry that happened Silvan, obviously the oven was too hot. I hope everything is ok now, good luck at the meet.

[DLGlos]

I followed this thread a bit, and admit to having been there before. The fact that you were able to strip it with mineral spirits tells me, despite what the can label says, you didn't have "lacquer." Its seems the spray bomb packagers have taken to calling fast drying enamels "lacquers", which of course they are not. Not by a long shot. Real lacquer in a spray bomb seems to be harder to find these days. Take a close look at the fine print, which they have to add, for a better indication of what it was you actually applied.

I can feel your pain on this one. Had a similar situation pop up with my sons 'rain gutter regatta' bit this past fall. Some extra, glossy latex and a carefully applied hair dryer saved the day.

David Glos

[Silvan]

I'll try that next time, if I ever have this problem again. I put the oven on its lowest setting, left the door open, and turned it off after about 10 minutes, but I guess it still got too hot.

[Silvan]

That's what I'm thinking too. I should go look at the can more closely and see if maybe it actually says "lacquer" in quotes. :)

The finish wasn't as pretty as it could have been, but the thing came out reasonably well at the end of the day.

He took second place in the Pack for speed, second only to one little car that smoked everything out there by a very wide margin.

Considering everything that versions 1 (eaten by a dog) and 2 (paint mishaps) of that poor car went through, second place is juuuuuust fine!

I've never seen my son happier. Ever. Sunday was a very good day indeed.

Oh, one last point to mention. I was too busy over the weekend to brag about this sooner. Right after we set up the track on Saturday night, we let our kids run their cars down to make sure everything was going to be OK. Our car was seriously fast. I said something to the effect of "Well, we haven't weighed it at all. It might weigh six or seven ounces with all that lead I put in there."

We hadn't set up the weigh-in station yet, so I got out the scale and set it up, then plopped the V 2.0 Rocket down. It came in weighing precisely 5.0 ounces straight out of my shop, with a basically random quantity of lead in it. It's the first year I've ever had that happen, and I was a Cub Scout when I was a kid, so I've dealt with a lot of these things. It weighed 5.0 ounces the next morning too. Amazing. That will *never* happen again.

[J T]

Sat, Feb 14, 2004, 11:11am [e-mail] (Silvan) says: but ye olde trusty SWMBO's Apple Barrel paint at least dried to a consistency that allows handling in very short order.

Next time use latex. Fast drying, water cleanup.

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[Silvan]

This was acrylic I guess. Fast drying, water cleanup. What difference does it make in the end?

The spray paint looked at lot better. I think next time I should use spray paint some February when it isn't snowing outside. If that ever happens again.

I remember a time when February used to feel very spring-like and encouraging, but that damn sure isn't happening this year.