The Painting Begins

The time has come to start painting. Oh yeah! I disassembled everything, and sanded all of the alu parts down to 120 grit sandpaper to get all of the scratches out. I really want a good primer coat. After some research online, I've that I want to use a chemical metal prep/etcher to ensure good adhesion with the primer to include all of the holes, etc that you can't reach just by sanding. I found a gallon of this Krud Kutter metal etching fluid at a local paint store (Sherwin Williams) for about $23, which was a lot cheaper than ordering something online. Metalprep 79 for instance would have run me about $30 for just a quart. I also got Rustoleum alu primer to use.



The cleaner/etching solution is easy to use. Per the instructions, you dilute 1 part solution to 3 parts water. I bought a plastic container for this. You simply wet all of the parts down, let them sit for about 10 minutes, and then rinse them of well with a waterhose and then let them airdry. This cleaner really does a good job. The alu came out really, really clean.



I have hanging rods to keep dust out of part of my work/storage shed, so these were a natural choice to hang everything up to dry on. I cut a bunch of short pieces of wire to hang the parts on. This is all of the parts with one good coat of primer on them drying.



I'm going to paint them all flat black first after priming to act as a good base color, and then paint them all with Brown Hammered paint. I've got a few more pieces to clean and prime, then I can get start on the black.

I also have decided that I'm going to go with copper pipe for this build instead of tubing. I found through another build log that Bitspower makes these SLI fittings that also will work with 3/8”ID 1/2”OD copper tubing. Bitspower also has a mini version of this fitting. I bought 12 of them, and also picked up some soft copper tubing and a few 90s and 45s this morning. This will be awesome if they work as planned. I really like the idea of hard-lining, and I have a tubing bender. I've hard-lined before, but I always had to use vinyl tubing to connect to barbs, which isn't an elegant solution to say the least. I don't like the Koolance copper tubing to G1/4” fittings as they are simply too long, and are $10 ea., whereas the Bitspower fittings are only $6.95 a pair. I'll probably paint the tubing to match the case.

Thanks for stopping by.