striping with a mack brush

[lurch]

i looking for the right mixture for paint striping. i use hok stiping paint, reducer and cata. do you have to use a mack brush or can you use others? i get air mag that has great tips on the traing but no mixing and other brush typs. thanks lurch

 

[Bornhard]

There are many styles of brushes and every style has a purpose. Depends on what you want to do.

I use xcaliber brushes for most of my striping and really like how they handle and layout nice, thin lines.

Mack's are an ok brush, but I only use them on thicker, longer lines like on the side of a car/truck etc.

 

[lurch]

so if im going to stripe flames or out line something what would be the best? who about the mix? they saw put some on the palet and thin.is it by the brush full,or is there a mix 1/1 2/1 ect?

 

[airartist]

Have you heard of the Bugler striping tool? I bought one, but I haven't practiced with it much. It lays down a great line. It also has several different wheels for various line widths.
Just asking.

 

[seedeucer]

I've got a Beugler also. I can lay down a straight line but it is a bitch to do sharp turns and keep the paint nice and even. That part will take practice. If I had some type of turntable to slowly turn the object while I striped then the turns would be much easier. You definitely don't want to stop in the middle of a stripe and turn your body around the corners to continue your line. So if you don't have a turntable or the object is too big to place on one, and you want to get nice tight continuous corners or curves then you've got to learn to roll that wheel away from you as well as toward you and that my friend is pretty hard. Get past that and hand striping would be a breeze not only a time saver.

 

[Bornhard]

both ways of pinstriping a flame work (tape outlining, or using a brush). It all depends if you can handle a striping brush.

As far as loading a brush I like to have 2 cups of striping reducer and a cup of the striping paint. Then get a nice slick paper old issue magazine for a palette. Dip the brush in the reducer and then in the paint. Run it back and forth (sweeping motion) in a straight path on the magazine page. Then dip the brush in the paint again and do the same motions over the spot you were doing it before. That should load the brush well enough. After all that, pull some practice lines on the magazine page to make sure it's pulling a good line. The second cup of reducer is to have some fresh clean reducer on hand for extra brush cleaning, or putting fresh reducer on a Q-tip for screw up clean ups.

Time to paint.

A good suggestion to all new and novice pinstripers is to coat the surface you plan on striping with some top coat clear. Let it dry 12 hours or so and then sand with 600-800. DO NOT sand with anything rougher. The stripe paint will spread out in some of those scratch grooves.
Don't go with anything finer than 800, cause you want some tooth for your paint and top clear.

Buy a Xcaliber brush, spend some hours at the handle practicing and you'll have no desire to buy a beugler tool /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/sunglass.gif