I see a lot of awesome logs on this site about crazy ass mods. Here's a recap of my first painting attempt. My hope is you'll laugh with me as I encountered several rookie mistakes that may make you say "oh, I remember when!"
Ok. I've been a lurker here for a long while as mentioned, and recently started posting. I suppose the next logical step was to DO something. Well... I did the cat5 RCA Cable thing: turned out pretty awesome, and my first time with a solder iron (ambulances standing by). I feel like a man!
And so I've decided to try something a little more fun: Painting. I figured I'd start easy. I work at ASU, and have access to a bunch of old mice. Mice are easy to paint! So I took some old 2 button scroll wheel optical Dell mice home with me, cracked one open, got it apart (fairly easy), went to Wal-Mart for some spray paint and clearcoat, and went to work.
Yes, Wal-Mart el-cheapo spray paint. I'm just testing things out after all. Since this was mostly a trial run to see how it'd end up, I did virtually no prep work ya'll are so adamant about. No sanding down or priming. This was a brand new clean mouse though, and the problems didn't come from prep. So I laid down my first coat of burgandy on the base after I taped it up, let it "dry" for 20 minutes, did a 2nd coat, let that "dry" for 30 minutes, and proceeded to do the click buttons golden yellow (school colors).
Once the base was dry.. no.. scratch that.. once I was no longer willing to wait, I masked the whole thing in blue painter tape and cut out the ASU logo, so as to paint that part the same color yellow. Well.. Painter tape is thick, and my exacto knife wasn't exactly like a knife through butter, so I carved groove lines into the plastic, as while cutting out the logo, I did it in strips. No big deal, the paint will fill in the scratches. I did my thing with the yellow paint, sat it to dry for 15 minutes, saw the scratches still showing, so I went back for a recoat of the yellow. Of course, spraying side to side as the Commando tuts say to do was taking too long, so I sprayed in one spot for like 1.5 seconds. I lol'd when I saw how thick it was.
Ok. Fast forward an hour later. I'm done waiting for this thing to dry. It's been next to a fan, it's gotta be good. I coat it in clearcoat, let it dry over the logo, and start removing the tape.
Red paint. Not quite dry before taping. Not quite dry. At all. Worse? Yellow paint for logo? ehm... less dry than the red. This is what I ended up with:
On the upside, the click buttons came out pretty nice.
So I learned that patience for paint to dry is crucial. CRUCIAL. And I don't think blue painters tape is necessarily the best thing to do masking with. I'm going to go out tonight and buy some high grit (or is it low grit for fine?) sand paper as well so my next attempt wont look so awful.
A few questions I feel better about asking now that I've attempted to do something:
1. What do you guys use for masking? Commando's tuts always seem like he's using something very thin to cover his parts. I've seen masking tape on Acrylic, but do you use that for alum? what about plastic?
2. I didn't use HQ paint by any means, this stuff was like 2 bucks a can. However, I did notice that even after the clear coat, the paint remains tacky or sticky to the touch.. I don't like that, is there a way to smooth that away? Is that accomplished by sanding?
3. As you can see, I went for a logo, but I did the Burgandy/Red and THEN the yellow. Should I have done a base coat in yellow, and then masked off the logo and finished in red instead?
Any tips would be awesome! I hope I made some of you laugh a little with my MAD MODDING SKILLZORZ. More questions to come in the future, don't doubt.