the finishing touches

http://i1075.photobucket.com/albums/...711_191012.jpgI always had planned on putting my type of paint job on my 260 build. I first had to get the forend and but stock situations the way I wanted. Well finally I had everything where I wanted an dont see any changes in the foreseeable future.

I painted with allumahyde from brownells and have several times. This is like my 6th paint job. Im kind of parial to tis type of pattern as I think ive gotten it down pretty well. I peeled the tape off a little early and pealed a tiny bit of pait with it. We can use this as a find waldo. See if you can find the peeled off paint that looks like it shouldnt have come off.

That looks awesome. Well done, sir. Details/specs on it?

That's not a painting error. It's a random, organic outline-breakup feature. Nice work!

Front of the handguard. Looks awesome!

Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk

Impressive!

Under the 110 savage rifle thread. I have a review about the sss action experience. Scroll down and I have a detailed painting description.

Oh and thank you

And the spot that tore was just behind the throw lever.

That CAMO is amazing...

Thank you and it's super easy to do.

My daughter informed me today she wants her rifle painted in "Mudy Girl" camo. So now I have to look at the colors in that pattern and order them. I just hope Brownells has kept up with the times.

Rats! No such colors in alumahyde. Will have to use duracote. That's going to be a challenging color scheme.

Um....shouldn't it be the color of Red Velvet? You want it to blend in, right?

Can you explain your paint process?

I had it all written down and was just going to cut and paste but I couldnt find it so Ill re cap. It is extremely easy. The most technical parts are really learning to work with the paint. It is a pretty technique sensitive paint that clogs up the spray tip. As long as you order a pile of tips, regular spray and clean out, you are golden. The first go round I had limited tips and kept having to stop and drop them into paint thinner to quickly unclog them. Lesson learned. With lots of extra tips it was super easy. Even the manufacture recommends it and I must have missed that part. There are a couple of really good application videos on Brownells.

Here is the way I do it in a nutshell. First and foremost is metal prep and blocking out everything that doesnt need to be painted. The first few of my rifles that I painted I took everything apart and this time I did not and still like the results and actually cant tell it wasnt taken apart prior to painting. This way I avoided having to re zero etc. I felt this was a big advantage.

Personally I use brake free first every where paint will touch and lots of paper towels and cuetips to remove all grease and oil as best I can. Then to remove any residue from the brake free, I liberally go over the entire thing with acetone and more paper towels.

Now I put on latex gloves at the end of the acetone treatment so I dont transfer any finger oil back to the rifle. Its a bit of a pain to do in gloves but now I tape off. Take lots of time and using painters tape I block out everything not requiring paint. Use razor blade to trim back extra tape.

Once tape is in place you can hang rifle with stiff wire through brake and an area on stock or sling swivel etc. This time because I didnt take apart, the feet on bipod were taped off and also the rubber on butstock so those parts were able to rest on table top. I hung my first few. I still used a coat hanger through the brake as a handle to lift and handle the rifle during painting.

I use 4 colors starting with coyote as base. Spraying very light coats at a time, it took 4 to 5 coats to cover entire rifle the way I wanted. You can use a heat gun or hair dryer to set the paint in between coats. I think the paint suggests next layer with in 30 min or at 30 min. Any how the entire paint job, just paint, took just over an hour.

After the base coat is finished and set. I use sea sponges from arts and crafts section of wal mart. Spray paint into dish maybe about 1 to 2 oz of paint. Soak a small area of sponge, dab on cardboard once or twice then go to gun and randomly dab on rifle. I go from light to dark with black being last. Use black sparingly. Just before finish, I use FDE to tone down the paint job. Quickly spray from about 2 feet away just dusting the rifle. It kind of ties all the colors together and tones down the bright spots and lightens up the black slightly. Now the waiting begins. This paint, alumahyde requires 2 weeks before putting back together. I shot mine at 1 week. The paint is supper tough at 2.

Thanks for the tutorial. I have used Alumahyde on a rifle in the past but just a single color. I sandblasted mine with aluminumoxide media since there was some surface rust when I bought the gun. So all the paint you used was the alumahyde correct?

Yes every bit of it. This is my 6th paint job and its some really tough stuff. Now I sold a scope that was painted and the guy that bought it was able to remove the paint. But he had to use paint stripper. I couldnt believe it didnt ruin the scope.

Wow, I'd sure try to be careful with paint stripper around the optic lens coatings!! lol

Ill be painting one more rifle in the next couple of months. We are about on deer season so Ill probably work on it on bad weather day. It will be my savage 10ba creedmoor. I was going to keep it straight original but since the stealth and all, there is no value left. Had planned on taking the heavy top metal rail off to lighten the load. But since I didnt expect everything to come back loctited and torqued, I will just leave it. Its only going to be a back up rifle anyhow. We will take it along to competitions and can switch to it if we have a catastrophic failure of either of our #1 rifles. It wound up with the unwanted ebr 1 reticle which cant be upgraded only sold. That was an ordering mistake. I didnt even notice till the box came in and I looked through it. Thought, oh well lets just try it and see if there is a difference. On the weekend stuff, just playing with loads etc., no problems at all. Possibly in a comp. holding up and off.... Could be important.

Any how, I will be doing a paint job w/o take down. Only part removed will be bubble level, and bolt. It took 3 hours to upload a 5 minute video last night so it will be short parts.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by doctnj

And the spot that tore was just behind the throw lever.

---

i wish you didn't say that, i was still looking for it!LOL. nice looking rig.

Bruce