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DIY Hydrodipping #6918810 10/13/17 05:06 AM
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aerangis Offline OP
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A fella I hunt with has an old Browning branded ATV that at one time had a nice camo finish on the fenders and plastic trim and panels. It sats outside more often than it sat in his garage and the once nice camo finish has faded over the years to a camo-patterned-pinkish-purple color. Barbie would look really hot rolling around on his ATV, but no man would risk being seen on the thing without running the risk of hunting by yourself and aquiring a nickname.....like Mr. Barbie, GAY-TV, etc. Anyway, a few of our hunting posse got together to take advantage of the cool temps to kill some hogs including Barbie boy who shows up with a nice new ATV with a trick camo patterned finish. Naturally, new-toy envvy got the best of us and we walked over to chew the fat and check out his..... Barbie ATV? He'd taken all the trim off the thing and used $.99 rattle cnn spray paint, a plastic tub, and water to refinish it and you'd have thought a pro did it. He said he watched a Youtube vid, spent $20 at wally world om materials and a weekend to do it. And it looks better than the factory camo on our Polaris and CanAm ATV's/ At first glance I thought it was a multicam pattern, somewhat similar to this...

[Linked Image]

I found some videos on the process including the one I grabbed the pic from. Cheap, easy, and simple to touchup. And convenient. I'd imagin it would work on metal as well if the surface was prepped so the paint would adhere. Add a flat clearcoat when the paint is dry and cured, and you're done.







Re: DIY Hydrodipping [Re: aerangis] #6924900 10/18/17 05:47 PM
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bowbuilder1971 Offline
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Looks great. I used to do hydrographics 10 years ago and it was addicting. I basically dipped everything that wasn’t nailed down lol. There was a company that made DIY Hydrographics Kits for a reasonable price. I am a Gunsmith and have a professional refinishing set up in my shop. So I like to try out different types of finishes and see how they hold up. My teacher always told us to think outside the box so I decided to try out a swirl finish. I did a camo swirl finish on an AR15 and a mag to see how it would look. It came out pretty good and through a lot of testing at the range, I found a good base layer and top coat that would hold up. I used Humbrol paint for the swirl since they have a ton of different colors to choose from, Alumahyde II for the base coat and AH II matte clear for the top coat. It looked like a topo map from hell lol. I ended up taking it all off after I took pics of it because it was just a trial. I plan on doing it again but with only black and different shades of brown for the camo swirl. When I did the mag, I really didn’t care about getting all the remaining paint on the surface out of the way before lifting it out of the solution so I got some blotches on it. I found that using a hair dryer worked best to push all the remaining surface paint to the side of the dip tank. I used a submersible fish tank heater to keep the water temperature within the appropriate range and a large hard plastic storage bin for the rifle tank. For the mag dip I used a 5gal bucket. It doesn’t cost a lot to make a swirl dip kit so that’s a plus.

Re: DIY Hydrodipping [Re: aerangis] #6924943 10/18/17 06:37 PM
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Texasteach Offline
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Tag


You did what?
Re: DIY Hydrodipping [Re: aerangis] #6925366 10/19/17 02:03 AM
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blackcoal Offline
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OK


The Greatest Enemy of knowledge is not ignorance,
it is the illusion of knowledge.--Stephen Hawking
Re: DIY Hydrodipping [Re: aerangis] #6925394 10/19/17 02:25 AM
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Stratgolfer Offline
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also tag, awesome!!


"I was called by the Yorkers a outlaw, and later by the english a rebel" Ethan Allen
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