Hi Kicks, I’ve seen a couple of examples of color shifting paint on bikes and would love to try this stuff out, but when I priced it I found it very expensive. Hopefully like everything else, the price will come down in time. What makes this stuff work the way that it does?


Danny Bane, N.J.


Well Dan, you hit the nail on the head there,... they are expensive, as are most of the specialty paints on the market right now. I guess that’s partially due to the cost of developing new technology, and partially because they can charge whatever the market will bear. How it works? When light strikes metal flake in a paint job, it acts


like a tiny mirror and reflects that same light back out at an angle,... if it hits a pearl, the light is refracted instead of reflected causing a colour shift. The pigment in these colour shifting paints like Du- Ponts Chromalusion,... can be thought of as a metallic flake sand- wiched between two pearls, as light travels through the transparent layers of the pigment, it bends, creating a rainbow effect making it look like different colours from different angles. Why don’t you shop around on the internet,... I know the cost of


a pint is a little inhibitive,... but a lot of places are now selling these colours in ounces, and when sprayed over a base coat of black, it doesn’t take much paint to achieve the desired effect. Instead of doing the whole job in this paint,... maybe just try doing some graphics on the bike instead. Good luck, and thanks for reading the magazine.


Kicks,


I have just had a friend whose bike tank I painted for practice, bring it back with a stone chip on the front about three inches back from the edge. It’s about 1/8” across. I don’t want to respray the graphics if I don’t have to but it’s only about 3/4” of an inch from them. The base color is black. This was a freebie in the first place, but he’s a good friend and I’d like to fix it up for him, any ideas for a quick fix, thanks in advance. Joe E., Wis.


Aaaaaah Joe,... it’s always the free ones that come back to bite you. There are two ways you could go here. The first is to take a few drops of single stage black paint,... add a drop of hardener so that it will cure nice and hard, then take a small artists brush and put a drop in the chip at a time, letting it dry up a bit between tou- chups until the paint domes slightly over the chip. As the paint dries it will shrink into the chip a bit so keep applying it until you have a build up slightly over the level of the clear coat. Let this sit at least over night to let the hardener cure it,... then using a sanding block and 2000 wet and dry sandpaper, smooth the area and buff. This works very well with small chips in solid colours like black, white, red, etc.,... not so good with pearls or metallics. The other way is to sand the whole tank with 800 dry or 1000 wet


and dry sandpaper, then fill the chip with a little polyester putty and block smooth. Make sure you don’t use a lacquer putty because it will shrink and the chip will show up later. Once you have a smooth surface again,... tape off your graphic and airbrush a little black base coat over the puttied area trying not to get to much of a build up along your tape line. Now that the putty is covered, pull your tape,... tack it off, and spray on your new clear coat. If you end up with a small imperfection along where you taped the graphic off,... just block with 2000 wet and dry, and buff up. Whichever way you go,... remind your friend,...”real friends bring beer”!


Hello, I live in California and was told that there are regulations here about what paints I can spray, something about VOC’s. What are they, and what’s up with that? Cool J, Cal.


VOC stands for Volatile Organic Compound. For practical pur- poses, this means ‘solvent’. The VOC content of a coating (paint) is high when the solvent content is high, and the solids content is low. That means paints like lacquers have a high VOC content and high solids 2-pack paints (BC/CC) have a lower VOC content. The Environmental Protection Agency has passed laws not only in California, but in many of the states and up here in Canada as well. They are aimed more at the production body shops and industrial manufacturers, but will effect the types of paint that you will find for sale in your area,... good luck finding lacquers. Of course, you could look on the bright side,... they’re trying to cut down on green house gases and improve peoples health. Some organics can cause eye, nose, and throat irritation; headaches, loss of coordina- tion, nausea; damage to liver, kidney, and central nervous system ,... and some are suspected or known to cause cancer in humans. Choose your paint wisely,... and be Cool ... J!


Well,... that’s it for another issue, thanks for joining us again this month,... I hope everyone has a Happy Christmas and we’ll see you all in the new year.


Hey,... that


last question reminded me of an Environmentalist Joke,...... 2 baby seals walk into a club.......


Please e-mail your questions to Kicks blairair@sympatico.ca www.blairairbrushing.com


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