OK I am just about ready for paint on the wings, stabs and rudder.....a bit more work on the fuselage.

The question is why do I use and like House of Kolor paints over something like a high build paint like PPG auto paints. It's important to understand the major differences between paints. Auto paints like PPG are normally designed to be painted "wet" where you constantly hold a wet edge as you apply it. In other words it's designed to go on wet for a high build, smooth finish with very little orange peal in one or two coats. Why is this good and bad?

Well if you are just trying to lay on a lot of color with the least amount of film buildup this is the way to go. Can you imagine a body shop trying to paint cars that require 50 coats of paint? You can see it wouldn't be cost effective for the material and for the time.

But for graphic intensive work like I am doing the exact opposite is what I want. What is needed in graphic work is a very "low" build paint that is almost transparent when applied. When you shoot of coat of HOK paint, at first you may think you haven't shot on any at all. The reason is HOK paints have extremely fine (and I mean fine) ground pigments in a carrier that flashes almost instantly. If you have ever shot the old style tinted lacquers you will know what I mean. The reason we want transparency is for doing blends and over lays between colors (and other reasons).

Let's say we want to do a transition from yellow to orange. If we tried to do that with a high build paint it would be very difficult as the different colors are so opaque they will just cover up the color we are trying to blend it into. We can thin the paint to create transparency, but if we thin too much the binders in the paint break down and can compromise the integrity of the paint. Conversely if you use a very transparent paint we can seamlessly transition from one color to the next, literally blending them from one color to the next.

For one thing HOK paint is shot totally different from normal auto paint. HOK color is shot very lightly and allowed to dry (flash) which can take just seconds where we can come back over it and lay on another ultra light coat over and over. In painters terms we are shooting it "dry". Dry simply says we avoid laying it on wet. To obtain a solid, opaque surface we need to lay on multiple ultra thin coats, so you can see it takes longer for a high build film. You would think laying on twenty or thirty coats would create a thick, heavy layer, but that is not the case as almost all the solvents flash (evaporate) very quickly leaving a very thin film.

HOK is used primarily by motor cycle painters and very high end car painters that demand the best. There are only two distributors in the U.S. (that I know of) that are allowed to sell it in small quantities for guys like me that don't want a quart can for 400 bucks a pop! The Eastern U.S. is serviced by TC Global and the West by Coast Airbrush. I buy pretty much everything from Coast due to quicker delivery times. They are both very fine companies..

http://www.coastairbrush.com/categories.asp?cat=11

http://www.tcpglobal.com/Automotive-...ouse-of-Kolor/

On to plotters next time.