Painting trades issue

[Cosmitz]

I woke up this morning with a desire to paint the trades on my KSC USP. I knew the basics and i already had a history of painting using acrylics from my miniature days. Got some white paint and nail polish remover and went to town. After finishing up the left side, i noticed something odd in the morning sun shining on the slide... The left side, where i painted and nailpolished over to remove the excess paint, now had a white-ish hue. It's very visibile when compared to the right side of the gun. Trades came out nice, sure.. but not having the left side full black brakes the contrast and makes it look dull.

 

I persisted with a lot of nailpolish remover and/or water with a lot of rubbing involved, but no go. Oddly, nailpolish remover seemed to actually bring out the white more. >.>

 

 

Tips?

[sir naggedalot]

Try a pure form of solvent, the stuff you have has additives and this is left behind causing the white stain.

 

 

 

IPA the site and then wipe some silicone oil and this should bring it back to black....

[Cosmitz]

Thanks. Guess my Citadel Paints don't work so well with airsoft. lol

[Boxster]

You have removed thin coats of the paint of the surface and the only way you can correct this is by repainting the entire thing black again. Try not to use solvent on any painted surfaces.

 

B

[Punkypink]

What nail polish remover did you use? Because there is a huge difference between the acetone ones, and the acetone free ones which use ethyl-acetate and is a lot more potent than acetone ones.

 

Is your slide ABS? Because ethyl-acetate nail polish removers WILL attack the plastic.

[Cosmitz]

Yes ABS, and no ideea what the nail polish brand is, it's not even in any language i can translate. >.>

 

After a few days of drying, it went back to the black it was before more or less. I did a wipe with double-rafined 98% alcohol which seems to have done some minor miracles.

[Punkypink]

It COULD have been ethyl-acetate. I think if you can check the ingredients you might see it spelt out even if the language isn't english, unless its cyrillic-based language.

 

Sometimes what happens when you use ethyl-acetate with paint is that it disolves the plastic and the paint molecues then get mixed into and become part of the plastic you see. Hopefully that hasn't happened here and that it was just some stubborn surface smears.

[LeLionNoire]

It COULD have been ethyl-acetate. I think if you can check the ingredients you might see it spelt out even if the language isn't english, unless its cyrillic-based language.

 

Sometimes what happens when you use ethyl-acetate with paint is that it disolves the plastic and the paint molecues then get mixed into and become part of the plastic you see. Hopefully that hasn't happened here and that it was just some stubborn surface smears.

 

I had a feeling all women were chemists...failing that...chemical warfare experts

[Punkypink]

I had a feeling all women were chemists...failing that...chemical warfare experts

you need to be good with chemicals if you want to render victims unconscious to perform penectomies on them.

[L473ncy]

Punky you'd probably be a good Chem Eng. Ahhhh the stories I've heard about the Chem Eng's in the Engineering department.....

[Cosmitz]

It COULD have been ethyl-acetate. I think if you can check the ingredients you might see it spelt out even if the language isn't english, unless its cyrillic-based language.

 

Sometimes what happens when you use ethyl-acetate with paint is that it disolves the plastic and the paint molecues then get mixed into and become part of the plastic you see. Hopefully that hasn't happened here and that it was just some stubborn surface smears.

 

Yes, it does contain Ethyl Acetate. After that, i used a stronger solvent, which all it said was it contained "aliphatic hydrocarburs" or something the like. Sorry, i don't have enough chemical vocabulary to translate that into english. But which did the same thing. After that, as said, i used double-rafined 98% alcohol... which, after it dried, did make it about 90% as black as it was before.

[Punkypink]

Oh dear. Then the plastic did get attacked by the ethyl-acetate. Thats why you couldn't remove the white marks, they were IN the plastic.

 

Ok gotta be careful with the ethyl-acetate on plastic airsoft bodies. Its chemical composition just makes it attack the plastic. It is not necessary "stronger" than other types of solvents on all materials. Afterall its meant to be "kinder on the nails" than acetone.

 

I hypothise that the double refined 98% alcohol might be just as potent on plastic but evaporates faster so what it does is it removes a very thin top layer which the paint molecues were in but leaves the rest of the underlying plastic untouched. There is something called plasti-weld that works on similiar principles.

 

I know ethyl-acetate evaporates a lot slower so it attacks the plastic more. What I used to do after over-doing the ethyl-acetate while removing paint was to use a cloth to buff the plastic while there was a bit of ethyl-acetate on the cloth itself. It then gave me a fairly even finish on the gun, downside being I'd have to do it to the whole gun. I did that twice, and since then I've avoided getting any more guns which had been painted. Or, if they're painted, they better be metal.

[Cosmitz]

Will note in the future not to use it, but i think it'll be fine after a bit more 'spit'n'shine'. Thanks for the detailed info. <3